


Reconciliation

by Tangerinedream



Category: Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers (2012), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Awesome Phil Coulson, F/M, Feelings, Fluff, Fury keeps swearing, Implied Torture, Loki Has Issues, M/M, Male Slash, Protective Thor, Redemption, Shapeshifting, Slavery, Slow Build, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-01-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-26 06:51:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 19
Words: 48,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/647761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tangerinedream/pseuds/Tangerinedream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The laws of Asgard are strict; the laws of Jotunheim are unmovable.</p><p>Freed from the influence of the Tesseract, Loki must still answer for his crimes. Powers bound, his life is now tied to those he has most greviously wronged.</p><p>Or</p><p>How Coulson gained a demigod and why Fury is not a pirate.<br/>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. An Envoy of Asgard

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first price of fiction in this fandom so all constructive criticism is welcomed.  
> There will be slash but I don't to give away any relationships so soon in the fic...they will come.  
> Sorry about the amount of swearing in this chapter, it just didn't feel right without it.

 Though he didn't give it much thought at the time, Bruce admitted that he had been the first to see it.

It had flown off as soon as Barton and the retrieval squad pulled up to the latest Hulk formed crater, his green counterpart having ended the latest battle with a spectacular smashing of two Doombots from over twenty feet in the air straight down onto the hard packed concrete, but it was just a bird. One that had perched patiently at the edge of the hole, watching the transformation with detached interest but animals were weird like that.                                                                                                       

'Puny bird’ had been Hulk’s input at the time, and then it had been largely forgotten.

 

* * *

 

Coffee in one hand and starkphone in the other,Tony strode though the hallways of the Shield occupied  tower block as if he he owned it, which incidenatly, he did. With the helicarier still under repair and Fury’s insistence that the organisation stay ’as close to the site of this clusterfuck as motherfucking possible’, Stark Industries had found themselves temporarily hosting several hundred suited agents. Stark had whined and bitched of course but it wasn't as though they were in the newly dubbed ’Avenger Tower’, _thank you so much for that Pep_ , and Tony at least knew where they were if not what they were doing. That was what he was here for today.                                                                    

“Morning gorgeous” he drawled as he invited himself into Director Fury’s office.

“Die in fire Stark” returned Maria Hill as she walked pointedly past him and out through the door.

“You wound me” Tony pouted and settled obnoxiously into the chair opposite the director’s desk; putting his coffee down on the documents there with the distinct hope that it would leave a mark. The bastard made damn certain to keep as much stuff on paper as possible these days because, _hello_ , Stark building equaled J.A.R.V.I.S enabled so anything computerised would be be decrypted before you could say ’firewall’. Without raising his eyes from the scrolling text on his phone Tony continued, “So anyways, I'm guessing you got me here to talk about the updates on the carrier because I really-”

“Stark”

“Yes?”

The billionaire’s eyes rolled lazily up only to stop in utter incomprehension as his genius level brain attempted to process the inconceivable sight before him. “You..you know Nick, if you wanted to embrace the whole ’dread pirate’ look I am so totally for that but you need to do your research man.”

The large crow perched on Fury’s shoulder gave a sharp caw in response to the superhero’s poor attempts at drawing breath between bouts on unmanly giggles.

“That,” the super spy cut in with an icy firmness,”is not a subject open for discussion, neither is it why I have summoned you.”

“Okay, point of reference. I am not one of your super-secret-ninja drones so no, you did not summon me. And secondly, this is still my building and if you are about to start prancing around wearing a frock coat and a cutlass to complete the look then I seriously need to know because Pep will need to sort the PR for that and I will need photos.”

Completely ignoring the duel looks of homicidal annoyance from both the bird and its owner, Stark lined up his phone to take a picture of the crow.

“Is it the spy thing? Do you have to have a black birdy because a parrot would ruin the image? Are coloured birds not cool enough for you or is it the whole ’Polly wanna cracker’ issue that you just want to avoid?”

 The bird in question chose that precise moment to swoop from its perch and snatch the offending device from between Stark’s fingers. Ignoring the resultant protests, it completed a circle of the room, releasing the phone so that it flew neatly out of the open window before settling itself back on the director’s shoulder.

“What the ever loving _fuck_ -”

“Listen Stark. The reason if have asked you here is to discuss the subject of Agent Coulson.”

Stark’s gaze flicked straight from the unrepentant bird to the spy’s stony face.

“Coma,” he clipped out, “Unresponsive. No changes and I would _know_ if the had been any changes because he is at the Maria Stark Foundation hospital and they know who to fucking call if there had been any changes.”

“There will be changes.”

“Like _hell_ there will be changes!”

The younger man exploded from his seat and slammed his hand down on the desk.

”He is receiving the best medical care and attention that money can buy and I know how much money can buy. You are not squirrelling him away to some spartan Sheild issue med centre to be forgotten about!”

“Sit the fuck down Stark and listen to me. Agent Coulson will be making a complete and full recovery as per agreement with the Asgard/Midgard reconciliation act.”

Stark slumped back into the chair and let out a low exasperated breath.

“You got Asgard on the phone?”

“Better. Jane Foster and her assistant now have a direct link up to Thor and his people. It’s mostly only messages getting through, not whole people yet, but we got a signed edict from the king of Asgard detailing the reparations that will be made following the ’unfortunate’ incident involving his son Loki.”

The crow let out an indignant squark and hopped down to the desk. Fury’s eyes followed it coolly.

“Yes, in addition to the monetary aid gifted to the rebuilding of New York City, we were assured that Agent Coulson would be returned to health. We also got him.”

Tony stared down at the crow on the desk, which he was pleased to know had been drenched with coffee following his outburst.

“Asgardian form of twitter?” He suggested.

“Cute, Stark. It came carrying the edict and hasn’t left since.”

Tony watched the bird as it stared up at him. He was no expert on anything feathered but he was sure that most birds did not glare at people with such withering disdain in their beady little eyes. Neither, he was quite sure, did many sport tiny manacles on each leg with fine silver chains strung between them. His attention was diverted back as Fury placed a rock on the table.                                                                                         Tony took a moment to wonder just how much he had drunk last night. Sure he had a few glasses but he had been up in his workshop ’til five and he hardly ever drank that much when coding...well not recently at any rate. But the last five minutes were beginning to blur into a surrealist reality and he was still attempting to process the fact that a bird had stolen his phone and that now he was staring at, as far as he could tell, a space rock.

“Foster has informed us that this is an Asgardian healing stone.”

’Huh,’ Tony thought, 'what do you know.’

“We can only assume that is intended for the recovery Agent Coulson.” Fury went on as Tony lifted the palm sized gem up to the light. “It didn’t come with a user guide however, so we have little idea how-”

He was cut off as the crow launched itself back into the air and snatched the stone from Tony’s hand before dropping it back onto the desk. Then, giving each man a measured look as if to say ’you are both complete idiots’, it settled just above the healing stone. In a shimmer of barely noticeable magic, the chain melded around the glowing rock and held firmly. Then, as if the added weight on the chain was nothing, the bird flew to the top of the door frame and gave a pointed caw of annoyance.

“I guess you’re following the bird Stark.” Fury concluded as he swept up the coffee stained papers. “Tell Coulson that he has six months paid leave effective from the moment he is conscious whether he likes it or not.

"And Stark?” He added, watching the other man reach hesitantly up to the bird. “Be careful. He bites.”


	2. Welcome and Unwelcome Returns

 

Reluctantly putting the roof up on his black cherry NSX (the though of his passenger going unintentionally flying out when he rounded a corner was an amusing one but not one that Asgard or Nick were likely to appreciate) Stark glared at the crow.

“I swear, if you crap in this car or leave claw marks in the leather I will have Jarvis call a taxidermist before you can caw. Got it?”

“...Caw.”

“Good.”

 

* * *

 

 If Tony had his way, Coulson would have been back at the tower in a ward of his own and receiving around the clock care. Then again, if Tony had his way, Coulson wouldn't have been stabbed; he wouldn’t have ruptured so many organs that it was only a previously unrealised fusion of cutting edge nanotechnology and a medically induced coma that saved him from checking out permanently. From a doctor’s perspective, the amount of damage that the man had physically healed in six short months was only a little short of miraculous, but Tony was a Stark and Starks demanded immediate results.                                                                                         It had been a mixture of Pepper’s gentle but infallible logic and Bruce’s medical background that prevented him sweeping in the moment the other man’s condition had stabilised and taking him to somewhere that Tony personally viewed as safe.

“You have to understand, Bruce.” Pepper had explained, “Tony creates things, that’s what he loves. But it means that when something...breaks, or malfunctions, he takes it as a personal insult. He has has to be the one to fix it.  
Tony also collects things...well people. Now don't take this the wrong way please Bruce, but he tends to collect people than need fixing in some way.”

“Like me.”

“No Bruce, _not_ just like you. When Tony took me on I was literally at the end of my rope; I was less than a week away from being homeless. He didn’t find me through an agency. He literally knocked me off my feet in the street and do you know the first thing he asked me?”  
“...Are you okay?”  
“Hell no. He asked me if I knew what language beautiful Brazilian women spoke.”

_”P-Portuguese mostly.”_

  
_“Portuguese! Of course, I’m such an idiot. Oh you're all wet; I’d help you up but I'm still dry. Do you mind picking up my folder? I dropped it when you ran into me.”_

_  
She had never felt so furious in all her life as she did in that moment, pushing the folder into that arrogant jerk’s hand._

_  
“Here. Was there anything else? Mr..?”_

_  
“Stark, and yes, do you have a job?”_

“What a jerk.”

“Yes, I know. But that impossible, emotionally stunted, materialistic bastard pulled me out of the darkest hole that I have ever been in and gave me everything that I needed. He needs to help people. Me, Happy, Rhodey, you and now Coulson.”

So it took both of them to persuade him that the best place for the Sheild agent was not the Avengers Tower.  
Their main argument boiled down to the fact that the building in question habitually housed two master assassins; a national icon, a man who occasional became a giant green rage monster and a genius who regularly blew up sections of, if not the whole, of his lab. None of these were conductive, it was decided, to the recovery of a man in a coma.

 

* * *

 

The crow flew ahead of Tony as he made his way to private room at the end of the ward. He’d given up trying to work out how the bird knew exactly where the agent would be and how all the doors in its path conveniently opened just as it neared them.

’Bloody weird Asgardian invention’ Tony fumed, ’Most likely some sort of automatron; it can't be organic...five minutes in my lab with a screwdriver and noone would even notice it had gone missing.'

Money could buy a lot when it came to making a hospital stay as comfortable as possible.  
The room the bird flew into could have easily been a suite in one of the more expensive and exclusive hotels that he billionaire frequented.  
Heavy silk curtains hung over the wide windows, their bottoms just brushing the plush carpet below. Tasteful ornaments decorated the mahogany sideboard and coffee table; the adjacent bathroom boasted a claw-footed tub that three men could have easily fit into.

The casual observer would have put this flamboyant display down to the decadent tendencies of the man who had funded it; Natasha Romanov was no casual observer. Where many would see unnecessary excess, she saw ruthless practicality.                      The bathroom had been fitted with all of the lifting equipment that a nurse could need to lower a fully grown man into a tub. The oak posters of the imposing bed had deep alcoves notched into them, in which sat the medical equipment that monitored the agent’s state. The bed’s heavy drapes helped to obstruct the view of any visitors from the various drips and lines that fed into and out of the man’s body. All in all, it was a room designed towards maintaining the dignity of it’s occupant.

The Black Widow swiftly intercepted the bird as it soared into the room; one thin knife burying itself deeply into the wall and only narrowly missing the crow which screamed a sharp arch back out towards the door.

“Hey! hey!” Stark called out as he entered. One hand flying defensively up to his shoulder where the crow flapped and cawed, it’s sharp little claws digging in through the material of his jacket. “Calm down Nat. It's a bird, not a missile.

“It is _carrying_ something.” She blithely replied, gracefully unfolding from the bedside chair  
and retrieving her knife. “You should have entered first; I would have known it was not a danger.”

“Because you trust me?”

“No, because I can take you out without trying. That,” she motioned to the agitated bird,”I have no prior experience fighting.”

“Well _that_ is out little Asgardian panacea. One feathery coma-cure from Thor’s dad.”

He finally managed to get a hand around the bird and moved it to the footboard of the bed where it shuffled and croaked uneasily.

“Clint should be here.” Natasha announced, pulling out her phone and firing off a quick text.

“I thought bird-brain and you were permanent fixtures here?”

“Stark

The word was intoned quietly but it sent warnings firing down Tony’s spine as he craned his head up to see the figure dropping down from the access panel in the ceiling.

“We...appreciate what you have done for him, for us, but make no mistake in believing that if we didn’t think for even a second that this was working, we wouldn't have moved him to somewhere that you or anyone else could ever find us.”

The moment that Barton’s feet hit the floor, the crow let out a faint cry and flew up to the headboard. If Tony hadn’t been so damn sure that this thing was some kind of alien tech, he would have sworn that the bird looked nervous.                                                         Its eyes flicked between each of them before resting on Clint’s, then with a noise that split the air, it launched itself upwards and crushed the stone beneath its claws. Before the finely glittering dust had fully settled of the mans’s face, the bird careened wildly towards the door which, failing to open, it subsequently crashed into.    

Tony felt himself being pushed back as the two Shield agents rushed in to assess the possible damage or any other effect that the powder had on their handler. Spun off to one side, his eyes were drawn to the bedraggled and twitching mess that had been the crow. Had, being the operative word in this instance, for the last time he had seen this thing now wearing the manacles: it had thrown him out of a window.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to all the wonderful people who have left kudos, commented and bookmarked.  
> The next chapter has been drafted and I hope to update every few days.  
> If you spot any grammar or spelling mistakes or anything that just doesn't scan quite right. Please let me know in the comments and I shall fix it :)


	3. Headaches and Handcuffs

The sickening wet crack that Loki’s head made as it was repeatedly slammed into the wall brought two orderlies and a doctor rushing blindly into the room. It took all three men _and_ Tony to tear the furious archer off of the weakly struggling god.

 

 “Stop Clint! You need to stop. You’ll kill him!”

 “He fucking deserves it!” Clint screamed, struggling wildly against them, trying desperately to reach the man on the floor. “That fucker deserves to _die_ for what he did!”

 “I’m not saying that he doesn't deserve it: he does.” Tony explained in the calmest voice he could, detaching himself from the group so that he could stand directly in front of the livid archer. “But that’s not how we do things, remember? We’re Avengers, we don’t sink to their level.” Then, dropping his voice, he added “at least not in front of the public, okay?”

 Barton threw off the orderlies’ hold and marched over to the window where he stood, back ramrod straight, knuckles white as he gripped the ledge. The doctor had taken the opportunity to rush to Loki’s side; holding a wad of sterile dressing to the impact site and shouting for a stretcher to be brought in.

 “That won’t be needed.” Natasha told him calmly.

Through the entirety of the attack she had sat silently at the edge of the bed, observing but not acting; cold and assessing.

 “ _He!_ " The doctor shouted, one trembling finger pointed at Barton’s back, “has just committed a serious attack on an unarmed man who is now bleeding out on the floor!

Look at him! The side of his skull is caved in! See that clear liquid that’s coming out of his ears and nose with the blood?  That’s cerebrospinal fluid. That means that he is bleeding inside his brain. If you don’t let me move him now be will die!”

 “Doctor I assure you that we can-”

 “No Mr Stark. I have a duty of care for anyone who requires medical attention which this young man definitely does. I will not be told who or who not to treat, even by the man who own this hospital.”

Natasha’s level voice cut through the room.

 “Doctor, look at your patient.”

 “Oh sweet Jesus!”

The doctor lurched to his feet and stared down in horror at the twitching body. Golden sparks of light had begun to trickle out of Loki’s bleeding eyes and torn fingernails. First lazily, like the steady stream of watery blood that was pooling on the carpet, but picking up speed as they watched until the mangled features were hidden beneath a shimmering curtain of magic.

With a stomach wrenching crack, the god’s neck returned to its proper alignment. Blood slowed then stopped, cartilage knitted itself back together and the curvature of the skull could be seen pushing itself back into place beneath the god’s matted hair.                   One of the orderlies was noisily sick in the background. The other stood as ashen and motionless as the doctor.

 “This is nothing you can assist us with,” the Black Widow explained in her calmest voice, “we will deal with this; this is what we have been trained for. You have other patients to see to.”

 Then, as if under a spell themselves, the three men silently left the room, pulling the door shut behind them.                                                                                                     The moment it closed, Natasha’s attention was straight back on Coulson. With one hand she tenderly stroked the worry lines that were etched the man’s forehead, with the other she was reaching for her gun.

 Tony found himself moving to stand protectively over Loki’s body.Though whatever magical light show the god had just performed had clearly saved his life, he was in no way healed. Dark finger shape bruises were forming on the delicate skin of his neck and blood had plastered thick wads of long hair across his pale face. 

The breathing was the worst. The agonised rattle that emerged from parched lips and threw Tony straight back into a cave and memories of beatings and lungs that refused to function after that much water and abuse.

 A low sigh of breath from the man on the bed brought everyone’s attention back to the present. Clint darted across the room and had the agent’s hand in a firm grip while Natasha continued to stroke his head and whisper softly in Russian.                              Tony couldn’t have felt more like an outsider in that moment if he’d tried.

 

* * *

 

 

Bleary eyes struggled to make out more than just shadows to begin with. A low, melodic voice came next, then a familiar grip and suddenly the time and location were all at once irrelevant because those two things meant everything. They meant that everyone had got out alright and that panicking and worries were, for the time being, nothing that he would have to care about.

 “Sitrep,” emerged the hoarse whisper.

 “Grimm Tales. Returned to flock. Going to burrow,” came the gentle reply.

'Unconscious for a long time but no lasting effects,’ Coulson summarised, ’Barton was no longer compromised and now they were all moving to a safe house for recovery.' That sounded just about perfect.

 

* * *

 

There was a military precision that spoke of long years of practice in the way that the two younger agents silently and methodically dressed their handler and helped him to his feet. With half an ear on their low voices,Tony sunk to his haunches to study the fallen god.

The manacles that held the crow’s feet now extended to encompass the other mans wrist and forearms, though the chain between them remained deceptively fine. In the absence of a doctor, Stark cautiously felt for a pulse and found it beating unnaturally fast beneath clammy skin. Moving the lank hair to one side, he noted that the god’s breathing had turned shallow and that his cracked lips were turning blue.

 “I think he’s going into shock.”

 “Who the fuck cares?” Came the coarse response as Barton returned from the dresser with a heavy winter jacket.

 “Elevate his legs and loosen any restrictive clothing.” Coulson instructed.

"Phil, he-”

 “I know Tasha. But he’s no use to us dead.”

The unflappable man, giving no indication that he had spent the last four months in a coma, walked over to Tony and took in the scene below him.

 “Good to have you back, Agent”

 “Good to be back Mr Stark. We will need to restrict his leg movement. I believe the manacles will hold his arms for now. Can you fetch the handcuffs from your car?”

 Tony, grateful for an excuse to leave the room, practically ran to retrieve them.

 

* * *

 

 In less than ten minutes, wrapped up on sheets and fully restrained, Loki was lowered less than gently into the backseat of the Shield issue SUV. Clint was far from happy about this turn of events, but even the bastard in the back seat could not detract from the feeling of utter rightness that was coursing through his system. Natasha beside him, beautiful and deadly, and Coulson behind him, safe and oh so capable.

 “Hey Tash?”

 "Mmm?”

 “How come Stark had a pair of handcuffs in his car.”

 “He’s a pervert. Keep your eyes on the road.”

 A comfortable silence filled the air for a few minuets before,

 “How the hell did Phil know he had them in there!?”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't hate me! Loki will be fine but it will get worse before it gets better.
> 
> Thank you again to everyone who has commented, bookmarked and left kudos.
> 
> If you spot any glaring mistakes, please leave a comment and I will fix it ASAP.


	4. Accept Responsibility

The months since Stark had ’liberated’ him from the Shield barracks had passed in a muddled blur. A jarring juxtoposition of new and wonderful experiences and the practical need to reconcile the painful memories of his past with the knowledge that life goes on and he would need to go on livening in it.

Steve could say in all honesty that he wasn’t sad to leave his Shield assigned room behind. Growing up during the Great Depression, the knowledge that beggars could not be choosers was a well applied adage but even to eyes well adjusted to the frugal side of life, the four plain walls and narrow bed had been hardly inviting.

 The hardest things about living in this new century, he’d decided, was not having anything that was truly his own. With the exception of his dog tags and shield, everything he had, down to the clothes on his back, had been issued to him. Even the long cherished photo of Peggy somehow looked different all these years on. Just another thing that he would have to get used to.

When the cocky billionaire had strutted into his room that night, practically bundled him into the waiting car and informed him that he would be moving into the tower, Steve had been convinced that he would end up in a science fiction torture chamber of a room, full of mirrored glass and robots like in the books he’d read growing up. The feeling of shame that flooded him as he was ushered into the perfectly normal, but nicer than any he’d ever stayed in before, room made Steve feel like a grade A heel. After all the man had done, offering rooms to all the team members that had remained on Earth and making sure that Coulson was in the best possible care, Captain America:’paradigm of truth and the American Way’, felt like he was falling short.

 “I found some of your stuff.” Tony said, leaning into the doorframe of Steve’s new room. “I thought you should have this.”

 Steve reached out and took the familiar leather folder, leafing through itwith  mountingdisbelief as Stark looked on.

 “I.. Agent Co...Phil told me that they’d all gone. Bought off by some eccentric billionaire collector years ago...” He trailed off.

 “ _Yeah_ ,” Tony admitted, scratching his head in a show of distracted self deprivation, “the old man didn’t stop looking for you, you know. I guess he thought that if he couldn’t find you... anyway,there’s a load of your stuff in storage. I’ll get it shipped here if you’d like. I just...yeah.” He spread his hands out expansively and grinned. “Enjoy the room. Jarvis will help you if you need anything.” Then he spun dramatically around and beat a hasty retreat.

Steve sank down onto the bed and stared at nearly a years worth of sketches of Brooklyn, Peggy, Howard, the Commandoes and dozens of other places and people that he thought he’d lost forever.

 

So, Steve had resolved to keep an open mind about this new century and the people in it and accept that, although Tony had the emotional maturity and attention span of a ten year old on a sugar high, he had proven himself to be a hero and a man worthy of respect. It was hard to remember this when the man in question came crashing through the lobby of his own tower screaming at his staff to evacuate the hell out and for Jarvis to deploy the suit.

 "Tony, what’s going on?” Steve shouted to be heard over the sound of flustered and confused employees fleeing the building.

 “Shit’s just got real Cap. Tash, Agent and Birdboy will be here in less than a minute and they are not bringing kittens and puppies with them.”

 “Stark.”

 “Jarv’, call Bruce for me. If he can handle this then have him meet us there. Start lockdown the minute they get in.”

 “ **Tony**!”

 “Yes?” The last word came out in the harsh metallic tones of Iron Man as the suit finished enveloping him.

 “What the heck is going on?”

 “Loki. He’s back and he’s coming here. Get your kit on; we’re meeting the others at the tank.”

 

* * *

 

 The black SUV screeched to a stop at the entrance is Tony’s workshop. Unauthorised vehicles couldn’t clear the last stretch of security so Clint slung Loki over his shoulder while Natasha and Coulson scouted ahead. If the god’s head inexplicably made contact with several doorframes on their way through the tower no one paid too much attention; accidents happen.

On Bruce's insistence, there were two Hulk proofed rooms in the Avengers Tower. On Tony’s insistence, neither room remotely resembled the circular cell that Shield made him construct for the helicarier.

The first, and most regularly used, was the ’playroom’. An entire basement floor filled with the latest in super-power-resistant toys for large scale smashing. 

Hulk, the team had learnt, could be completely docile post battle, provided of course, that there had been plenty to destroy. On the rare occasion that the team assembled for a crisis that did not require too much in the form of brute strength, they were left with a ten foot tall rage monster with all the sunny disposition of a five year old who had been promised a trip to the zoo and was taken to the library instead. Mostly the Hulk smashed up a couple of cars or bounded away to find some decently sized rocks to pulverise, but this wasn’t always a good option. Hence the playroom. 

The other room was a cross between a small apartment, a high security holding cell and an aquarium. Bruce had never needed to use it, but it had housed more than few guests with more than usual abilities.                                                                                             The tank had proven itself to be flame, electric, super strength and goo (don't ask) proof. As the second set of doors slid open and Loki was tossed in, Steve sincerely hoped that it was God proof too.

 

With an arrow pointed at his right eye socket, the Widow’s Bite primed to administer a potentially lethal electro-static pulse and a Shield agent pointing a gun at him, Steve didn’t think Loki would be capable of much more than a cough, but held position just next to Stark.                                                                                                                        Getting a closer look, he revised his previous statement. Loki looked just on the edge of being violently ill all over the floor of the tank. The Shield agent had obviously reached a similar conclusion and motioned Clint and Natasha back just in time to miss the spray of blood that erupted from the god’s mouth.With a grimace of disgust, the Black Widow steered the two men out of the chamber, slamming her hand down on the panel to shut the doors behind them.

Steve stared at the agent in disbelief.

“Sir, there is a call for you.”

 “Not now Jarvis. Oh yeah, may have forgotten to give you the memo Cap. Agent’s back, cue balloons. Jarvis? Do we have balloons down here?”

“Sadly not sir, however, there is still a call for-”

“Mute.”

Steve lurched  forward and then stopped himself, hanging back uneasily, looking down into the bemused face of the man he’d failed so badly.

“Captain, it’s good to see you again.”

“Me too. I mean, it’s good to see _you_ , I mean...welcome back sir.”

He was saved from further embarrassment by the timely pinging of the elevator and the arrival of Dr. Banner.

Tony slid up his faceplate.

“Brucie, you going to be ok with this?”

“Jarvis got me up to speed; he won’t be any use to us if he bleeds out in there, besides, we smacked him down once, we can do it again.” He hefted the medical bag up onto his shoulder and walked over to the glass wall of the tank. He knelt down so that he was level with the god who had not even moved out of the puddle of vomit and blood.

“Loki. Do you remember me?”

Bloodshot eyes opened a crack before squeezing tightly shut again.

“I’m coming in now to assess your injuries.I’m sure that I don't need to remind you what will happen if you try to escape,” a hint if green entered the doctor’s eyes, “but I can't say that putting you a metre through the floor again would not make both of us incredibly happy.”

With a nod from Tony, Bruce entered the tank and approached the shivering god.

Thick manacles had dug welts into his forearms and Bruce could see through what remained of the god’s clothes that he was seriously malnourished. Bruises littered his face and arms and the blood that streaked down from his lips told Bruce that there were most likely still internal injuries to contend with.

“I’m going to put a drip into you now. It will help with the dehydration.” He explained, raising one emancipated wrist to search for a vein.

“It would...be kinder...to let me die, beast.”

Bruce did not respond to that; he didn’t need to.

 

* * *

 

 

Two hours later, with Loki’s condition stabilised as much as it could be, Bruce rejoined the team in the 10th floor rec room. The tower had multiple rooms for semi-large gatherings but this was the only one with a bar the size that many nightclubs would envy.                The team had taken full advantage of this and by the time Bruce entered the room, everyone had a drink in their hands. Clint was the only person who looked relatively happy about the situation, _his_ drink, Bruce noted, sported a jaunty purple cocktail umbrella.

Tony, Natasha, Steve and Coulson were deep in discussion and clustered around a holo-screen, on which the live feed from the tank was displayed.

“What we need to do,” Steve was insisting, “is to contact Asgard. Find out whether they know if he’s escaped or not, and how long we will have to keep him here.”

“Right. Jarvis, get Foster on the line. She and her foxy assistant can dial-a-god and we can get an ETA on psychopath removal.”

“Sir, Dr. Foster has been attempting to contact you for the past two hours and forty-seven minutes. Shall I play the message?”

At a nod, the A.I proceeded to play the voicemail.

 

' _Mr Stark, this is Jane Foster._

_At 1:52pm today we received a massive surge in activity through the partial Einstein-Rosen Bridge in our lab._

_A solid mass object successfully transferred from Asgard but we think there must be some mistake. The package was addressed to Phillip James, Son of Coul._ _I’m assuming that it’s intended for Agent Coulson so we sent it with our Shield liaison. The strange thing was, the moment it was taken offsite, the bridge re-activated This time, we got a straight message._

_**The Son of Coul must accept**._

_It doesn’t make any sense though; Agent Coulson is still in hospital._ _If this makes any sense to you please let me know. The same message has been coming through every ten minutes, my desk is completely covered in slips of parchment.’_

 

“This message was time stamped at 4:17 this afternoon.” Jarvis concluded.

Bruce took of his glasses and began to polish them on his shirttails. Clint and Natasha turned to look at their handler, ready to take their cues from him. Tony knocked back the last of his scotch before whipping out his tablet and typing furiously.

“I’ll find out where that package has gotten to and have it rerouted here. I’ll also get Foster’s crew updated on Sleeping Beauty’s awakening. The only thing you need to do now, Princess Coulson, is accept.”

“Accept what exactly?”

 “Does it matter? They did send the hippy healing crystal that got you back on your feet. Maybe it’s a disclaimer? I accept that any side effects that I have on may experience as a result of alien tech being used on my person. My guess is, you owe them a favour. Do it for poor Dr. Foster’s potential recycling problem if nothing else.”

Coulson shrugged, even if it was hard to admit it, he couldn’t argue with Stark’s logic. Feeling like a complete idiot, he moved to the centre of room and enunciated clearly.

 “I, Phillip James Coulson, do accept that which Asgard asks of me.”

 

 On the screen behind him, Loki began screaming.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, big chapter. This is where we really get going.  
> I'm trying hard to keep the characterisation believable and not too OOC, let me know how I'm doing?  
> Thank you as always to all the wonderful people who have left kudos, comments or bookmarks.


	5. Property

By the time the team had reached the tank, Jarvis had been forced to deploy a security droid to prevent the god from tearing his own throat out.

It had taken Steve on one side and a fully armoured Iron Man on the other simply to pull Loki’s hands away from the carnage of blood and flesh that had once been his neck. Sparks of gold flared up like fireworks around the damaged areas, attempting to knit the skin back together but the damage was too extensive. Strips of gore hung in strips from the god’s fingernails and his constant thrashing made it virtually impossible for Bruce to get a dressing fixed to the raw flesh.

Tony retched behind his helmet and was forced to look away whilst holding the man down with bruising pressure. His mind was reeling and his stomach was revolting. It looked as though the god had plunged his fingers through the skin of his own neck; ripping through the skin and leaving gaping mouths which spewed blood over exposed tendons.             The bunk flexed and creaked as Loki bucked under their grip, his hands clawing against the gold-titanium alloy of the Iron Man’s armour, frantically trying to further the damage to his throat.

Tony had never been so happy that he'd installed air filtering in the suit and spared a thought for the others who were forced to breath the blood drenched air. He could not cut out the screams shock tore from the ruined throat. Unending, they rise higher in volume and pitch as the struggling increased; punctuated randomly with  desperate keening pleas in broken Norse.

 “Aldregi! Allfather, _Neinn_!”

 “Shit, he’s got the chain wrapped around his neck.”

 “ _Neinn_!”

 “He can’t have. It was attached to the manacles.”

 “Aldri, Allfather. Please, _please_. Neinn þræll: _æva_ þræll.”

 “Well it’s not now! Keep his hands down, we need to-”

 With a lightning fast strike, Natasha jabbed an arrow into Loki’s exposed jugular before darting back out of the way. Both men stared at her in absolute incomprehension.

 “That was a Hulk dosage,” Clint explained, “Tranq arrow. I’d do it myself, but  I'd have used my bow and Coulson’s not letting me near him with it on me.”

Under their cautious watch, Loki spat out one then two mouthfuls of blood before falling still upon the bunk. Tony, mindful of the still twitching fingers and madly rolling eyes, kept one gauntleted hand firmly in the centre of the heaving chest. The reinforced medical restraints were torn through and the droid had rocked back unsteadily as he’d approached, having taken a serious kicking from the mad god while executing its duties. Excruciating pain didn’t seem to have a detrimental effect on the man’s godly strength.

 Bruce was swearing under his breath as he worked around the glowing strands of magic. As before, they seemed to clear up the most drastic of injuries but leave anything that could be loosely classed as not life threatening.

 "Tony, can you stay? I don't think we'll need everyone in here." He sent a pointed look at the trigger-happy Hawkeye who returned a shrug as if to say 'can you blame me?' But he filed out silently after Natasha and Steve. The super soldier looked ready to argue but even he knew that it wasn't worth provoking the Hulk over the right to stay.

 It didn’t make any sense though, Tony thought as he took in the state of the once proud god. He hadn't been trying to escape, he'd hardly been in any fit state to try, and if Loki had wanted to kill himself then he was smart enough to have figured out a far cleaner method. Besides, people attempting suicide generally didn’t plead for mercy.               Tony didn’t speak much Norse _(he’d learnt a few chat up lines but he did that with every language)_ but he knew the sound of someone begging for their life. He’d done it himself.

 “Jarvis.”

 “Yes Dr. Banner?”

 “Can you ask Agent Coulson to meet me outside the tank?"

 Tony looked up questionably into eyes that had gone a less than subtle gamma radiation green. Bruce held his gaze for a moment before grunting and leaving the tank. Tony sighed, a look like that meant that as soon as he was done talking to Agent, he would be heading off to Zen out his brain or smash some stuff.

 Wanting to go after his friend but stuck in the tank with Loki, he cast an irritated look down, watching the strands if golden magic glimmer around the thick wad of sterile bandages before sinking back down into the god’s skin. Morbid curiosity prompted the genius to lift one edge of the sodden material up to inspect the damage beneath.

 The hastily applied surgical tape pulled skin as it peeled back and Tony was shocked to see the glint of metal beneath it. Surely the chain hadn’t fused with the skin as it grew back? 

Bruce’s quietly intense conversation with Coulson went unheard by Tony as he carefully removed the blood-soaked dressing. The tranquilliser had finally taken full effect and the god barely twitched as he pulled the tape free and stared openly at what had been hiding beneath.

The hungry gaping holes had pulled themselves closed and there were patches if fragile new skin forming over the shallower gouges. The chain had not, in fact, fused with Loki’s skin as Tony had queasily hypothesised. The metal had instead multiplied and spread across the surface of the healing skin in a series of interlocking plates; the widest lying just above the god’s prominent breast bone, then becoming finer as they looped behind his neck.

The central plate held deep engraving that Tony absentmindedly appraised with a metal worker’s critical eye. The lettering was clear and well set in a pleasing, if angular, font which caught the light with those golden flecks of magic that he as becoming so familiar with. Those details all paled against the over riding and stomach churning realisation of what those words meant.

 

 

                                  **Accepted property of Philip James Coulson**

  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it's a short one but the next one's a biggie.  
> Thus ends the bashing of Loki! I know that a few commenters have been concerned but I really wanted to make this believable and I don't think that Asgard and Jotenheim would put him up in five star hotel while awaiting justice.  
> I'm thinking about a fluffy interlude..what do you guys think? Fluff or on with the plot?


	6. No Man Is Above The Law

 

Odin Allfather looked down at the snarling beast as it was thrown below the throne dais and felt his heart break in his chest. The corrupting power of the Tesseract had taken root in his son’s mind and had gorged itself on the myriad of fears and insecurities that had festered unnoticed for far too many years.

 It had always been too easy to focus on Thor. Thor who had been so easy to love; a strong embodiment of all that was prized in Asgardian culture. Thor who had ultimately proven himself to be a spoilt and selfish child in a man’s body: a product of too much freedom and never being forced to share that place in the sun that he had always believed had been his divine right.

 Loki had always been quiet. No, Loki had always been _told_ to be quiet. To remember his place. 

Loki had never excelled in the areas his brother had. His ways were subtle, his manners light, his fighting style full of sly misdirection and cunning grace.

 Perhaps, the old man mused, it would have been fairer for him to have quietly lodged that Jotun babe he’d found so long ago with a trusted family outside the royal court. That child would have grown up within a loving home but without the constant judging eyes of the nobility of Asgard upon him.

 There were certain expectations that a prince must live up to. He must be brave and fight loyally alongside his shield-brothers in defence of the realm; he must speak with truth in his heart and on his lips for the words he speaks are of all his people. He must prove himself in honest deeds which speak of his character and chivalry.

 Loki, who had always thought before acting, had been branded a coward by Thor’s unthinking friends had turned to magic initially in a desperate attempt to rectify the traits which he found so deficient in himself.

 If only they had seen Loki’s budding magic as the useful and powerful tool it had become, instead of ’silly tricks’ from a tag-along brother, not really fighting at all, not anything that could compare to an honest warrior with armour and a sword and a shield.

 Yes, it would have been far better for that fiercely intelligent, imaginative and love seeking boy to have grown up where his future would have been as an open book before him. A merchant’s child could follow a path of his own choosing, be it a warrior’s way or as a craftsman or a traveller or a healer.

 There, the father would not be forced out of fear of discovery to spurn the attentions of that child so unlike his brother. _That_ father would not have selfishly wished that the child had been more like his brother.

 Odin had taken that clay and moulded it into a narrow channel, expected it to follow that deeply forged course  when instead it had split the mould and left destruction in its wake.

 So many things that could have been.

 So many regrets, but never did he wish that he had left that tiny baby on the unforgiving ice. For all the pain that a child brings to your life there are unmeasurable joys. A less selfish father would have embraced those joys as the innocent gift that they were.

 Odin struggled to see that boy in the man before him. The poison had run too deep and it was clear that what remained of his son had grown weak under its raging power. He could remove its influence, but what would remain of the man beneath it?

Golden Thor, with open stance and tired eyes, held the chain that bound the traitor’s hands. His heart still held love, that had never wavered, but his fault had been through believing that just because he felt something, meant that it showed.

  _I never wanted the throne, I only ever wanted to be your equal_

How he had failed both his sons.

 And now his hands were tied for the laws of Asgard were strict and Loki’s parentage was no longer a secret.

 Not even a king could put a single man above the law.

Jotenheim bayed for the blood of the man who had slain their king and had come close to the destruction of their whole world.

  _I could have done it, Father! I could have done it! For you! For all of us!_

And now Odin was faced with the result of centuries of neglect and ill patenting. There was simply no other course that he could take. Even the life of his son was not worth the countless deaths that would result of a war between Asgard, Jotunheim and Midgard for one would most assuredly break out if justice was not seen to be done this day.

A king cannot put one man above the law, but he could place him when the law could not touch him.

 

“I, Odin Allfather, son of Bor, weirder of Gungnir and ruler of Asgard, the chief of the Nine Realms, have reached my decision.”

 

* * *

 

 Coulson followed Natasha into the elevator and across the hallway in a daze.                 The nearest he could recall to this feeling was the state of shock he had been thrust into when an undetected land mine had detonated and the body of the man in front of him had been throw back and knocked him to the ground. That feeling of frantically grasping for elusive understanding as his brain tried to process a million tiny pieces of information at once had made his head swim. At the time, there had been other soldiers to pull him up and keep him moving. To check him for TM rupture when he couldn't respond and get him back to base where rough hands had pulled him back to awareness and let him know that he was still here, still alive.

Here, in this luxury monument to modern day power and innovation, a delicate hand pulled him along insistently. Never tugging but not letting any slack form between them. There was power in that hand, he knew it. He’d seen it throw knives and scales cliff faces and he’d felt it on his skin in so many different ways.

If there had been an emergency, if the hand towing him had been another’s, then he would have forced himself back. He would need to have fought, to respond, to do his job but now there was a bed, and soft touches, and a man who knew him as deeply as the woman did.                                                                                                              Letting her take the jacket from his back he leaned into the warm and solid embrace of the man he thought he had lost.

Fingers remembered even if the mind is wandering, and he felt himself unclip body armour and unbuckle arm guards as he was lead down onto the sheets.

Turning to bury his face in scarlet hair he moved his arms into a loose hold; he could never hold tightly, not with her. The man at his back had no compunctions and wrapped both his arms and one leg around the agent, as if he would disappear the moment his grip lapsed.

Curled in on each other, far more used to occupying a single issued bed, three Shield agents slept soundly for the first time in months.

 

* * *

 

 Down in the tank, Iron Man shoed Dummy away from him; the idiot bot kept slopping water all over itself and the floor.

Then, with resigned purpose, he moved the sponge back over the healing flesh as gently as he possibly could.

Green eyes starred up unseeing, tears running silently down pale cheeks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One of my classes was cancelled so I found some time to type up a new chapter.  
> As promised, here be fluff.  
> I promise, things are looking up for Loki, even if it doesn't look like it yet.


	7. Family and Friends

The grey sand shifted in drifts around him.

Absently, he watched the impressions of his footsteps fill and disappear back into the dunes.

It was calm here; the gnawing pain in his chest had not so much lessened, than become distant. Numb. 

He knew who he was, what had happened, but it seemed now to have happened long ago or perhaps to some other man entirely.

He could not stay here.

Deep in his soul he knew that to be true and that hurt so deeply, though he could not recall why.

Others were here; moving forward, feet passing over sand. Their shapes were indistinct. They were perhaps further off or maybe they only seemed that way. This land left his mind clouded, he began to care little whether his thoughts made sense.

She saw him there. Familiar and family. She had seen him often and her soul sang at the sight of him but she knew as well. He could not stay.

She called him to her and cradled his fragile soul in her arms and sang to him of healing and new life and hope.

He could not stay, but she could hold back her tears until then.

 

* * *

 

_Drip_

_Drip_

_Drip_

 

Steve watched the coffee slowly percolate into the waiting glass bowl. 

He had brought a mug to Tony some hours ago. He’d formed a habit of bringing caffeine and hot food down to the garage. For all that Tony was an amazing inventor inventor and certified genius, when he dived into a project he seemed to loose all sense of self preservation, not stopping until his body physically began to fail him. It had not been unusual in the pre-avengers days when Pepper was away, for Tony to forget to eat for days on end, existing purely on the bizarre smoothie concoctions his devoted robots made for him until he passed out over a workbench.

 

_Drip_

_Drip_

_Drip_

 

He had still been suited up when Steve had entered the tank room. Motioning with the mug, he took a seat on one of the chairs outside the enclosure and waited, the heat of the coffee in his hands not nearly enough to shake off the chill that filled him.

Tony waited for the doors to hiss shut behind him before rolling out his stuff neck and sinking gratefully into the adjacent seat.

 

“Is he going to be alright?”

 

Stark shrugged, accepting the mug and chugging down the contents. “Who can say? Physically, I guess. He’s taken a hell if a beating and done a real number on himself but his light show trick cleared up the worst of it and the bashing from Clint is fading too. I don’t know how fast these guys heal though, I don't even think Bruce does. Is this normal or not? The situations not. The situation’s completely FUBAR if you ask me but....” He trailed off.

 

_Drip_

_Drip_

_Drip_

 

Tony had explained as much as he knew. Yes, Coulson had been told, No, Loki hadn't said anything yet.

Looking through at that blank face with it’s wide staring eyes, Steve wondered if it would be for the best if he stayed like this. He’d seen to many men had with that expression: sunken so deep into their own minds when reality became far too much. It was painful to watch as they woke up and were forced to face the facts. Many didn’t wake up; maybe it was kinder when they didn't.

 

_Drip_

_Drip_

_Drip_

 

He had to ask.

This was Tony’s tower after all and, by all rights, should have been Tony’s team.

Clint and Natasha were ultimately loyal to Coulson and where he went, so did they. Stark’s handling of Agen Coulson's treatment had most likely secured their loyalty in turn.

Bruce would stay by Tony’s side or disappear into another third world country again and there would be no way that Shield or any other organisation could ever hope to bring him back.

Steve had still been in the barracks when most of the long drawn out, never quite arguments, were fought between the two scientists but he saw enough of the aftermath to realise that Tony had spent pain staking weeks convincing the other man that the safest place for both himself and the rest of the world, was right here.

In comparison, Steve had needed no cajoling or meticulously planned arguments to sway him over to Tony’s way of thinking. They had a rocky start and they sniped at each other like there was no tomorrow, but their initial rift had formed from Steve’s desperate hope to see Howard again and childishly being disappointed that the son was not the father, and Tony seeing the man that his father had held so highly in his esteem, that all his son had been in comparison was a disappointment.

They had settled the majority of their differences, but he could see that he’d surprised the older man when he’d  asked.

 

_Drip_

_Drip_

_Drip_

 

“...mentally, I have no idea. I mean, he was a bag of cats before but this?” His gauntlet slid back into itself as he pushed his hand roughly through his hair, only serving to dishevel it further and add to the image of complete exhaustion that he was exuding.

 

“What should we do with him?”

 

Tony looked taken aback. “I..I don’t really know.”

 

“It’s your decision.”

 

“You’re the leader.”

 

“It’s still your decision.”

 

“...I don’t like this. It’s bad enough what we had to do to protect Bruce, but _this_?”

 

“Is he safe? I mean, is he going to be able to break out of there?”

 

“Shouldn’t be,” he stifled a yawn, “he’s pretty damn out of it but at least he’s cleaned up now. There’s nothing worse than lying in a pool of your own blood. Dummy can play nursemaid for a bit. Jarvis is keeping an eye on things, aren’t you Jarv?”

 

“Indeed sir. I shall continue monitoring. Was there anything else?”

 

“Nah, Jarvis. You're good. Night Cap.”

 

“Goodnight Tony.”

 

_Drip_

_Drip_

 

The bowl was full.

 

With stiff mechanical movements, Steve hoisted himself out of the kitchen chair and poured himself a fresh mug. The table was littered with full cups that he had clutched until the warmth had leached away, the coffee stagnating silently.

 

* * *

 

Morning found Clint and Natasha still entwined in their bedroom. While it had always been hard to extract himself from their embraces, Phil had a phone call or seven that simply couldn’t wait.

He tried to compartmentalise his feelings. He embraced order, he always had. A large problem could always be broken down into a smaller set of problems that could be handled individually, processed and then eliminated.

This was an enormous...he hesitated to use the word problem, problem hardly seemed the correct term to attach to this particular...issue.

Right then, the _issue_ at hand. He had, through his own, however misguided, actions become the owner of a sentient being. Of Loki. Quite frankly, the idea of making the bastard suffer for what he had done to him and his family was a pleasant one, but to make the man his slave. No.

Phil was no stranger to slavery. It was one of those things that had almost become a by-product of terrorist lead sects. Working undercover in Sierra Leone, he had seen men and boys snatched from their families at gunpoint and forced down into the mines. In the nine weeks that it had taken Shield to bring down that particular blood diamond trafficker, he had seen fourteen men shot dead for trying to escape and countless civilians raped and mutilated for the smallest of perceived slights.

Punks fresh out of jail, the ones who had traded their only commodity for protection, they were slaves in all but name. He’d met a man once who’d been a bitch; a plaything for inmates and wardens alike. He hoped to god that Loki had not been reduced to that. That man had seen sex as the only thing he was good for in life, turning to prostitution to fuel the crack habit he’d started to escape from the horrors of daily rapes. He'd been a good source when Phil could track him down, back in Moscow, but he was dead inside.

 

He needed to know what had happen to Loki. It was obvious that this was meant to be the god’s punishment for his attack on Earth and, if one applied ruthless logic, it made sense. From what he had learned from working with Thor and Dr. Selvig, Asgard, for all its scientific advancements that bordered on magical, was a society that many would refer to archaic.

Thor had spoken offhandedly of having servants that attended him and it was not a great stretch of the imagination to believe that a culture that had servants would also have slaves.

It may even be commonplace in Asgardian law for a criminal to be given over to the people they had wronged to face a punishment that they deemed fit.

There were too many variables to make an informed decision.

 

He needed to talk to Jane Foster. If she had a link to Asgard, then he could find out exactly what was going on and what he was expected to do, because there was one thing he was certain of: he would never treat another man as a slave.

 

“Agent Coulson?” 

 

The polite voice sounded almost hesitant to interrupt a man so deely in thought.

 

“Yes Jarvis, what can I do for you?” He had learnt the trick of looking slightly upwards when addressing the AI, this tended to prevent one from looking quite so much like a crazy person when addressing the disembodied voice.

 

“The package from Jane Foster has arrived and is down in the lobby. As I believe it to contain information connected to our current guest I thought it prudent to inform you. Could you collect it and deliver it to Mr Stark? I can send one of the robots if it would be an inconvenience.” There was a sound that was most likely the electronic equivalent of a sigh. “Sir appears to have sent all of his staff away.”

 

“That’s okay Jarvis. If you could direct me?”

 

“Of course, sir.”

 

 

The woman sat in the lobby, her knee high boots kicking a distracted pattern into the back of the chair in time to the music blaring through her earbuds.

When Coulson walked in she shot up as if electrocuted, her bubblegum popping unattractively over her made-up face.

 

“Oh-my-every-loving-god! You’re okay!” Phil suddenly found his arms filled with the enthusiastically bouncing form of Darcy Lewis. “They didn't tell us you'd woken up! Jane has been _insufferable_ recently so when a fucking private jet turns up for that box from Space Viking World, I got a free trip here! How cool is that?”

She did what can only be described as a happy shuffling dance on the polished floor before stopping suddenly and looking across guiltily, obviously remembering the reason she was here. She scooped up the satchel from her vacated chair and handed it over.”I guess you’ll want this. Can I be around when you open it? We tried earlier but it did some _freaky_ shit.”

Handing over the bag, she rocked back on the balls of her feet, grinning widely at him when he motioned for her to follow him.

“This, is going to be so much fun!”

 

Far below them, Dummy's optic servers whirred as he logged the clenching and unclenching of the man's fists. He beeped uneasily, watching the fine gray sand flow from Loki's fingertips into the ever growing pile on the floor.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, Darcy's here now :) this should be fun.  
> Sorry this chapter took so long, it's one of those linking chaps that will be important later.
> 
> Tune in next time for:  
> The package from Asgard  
> The return of Pepper  
> And the awakening of Loki
> 
> Points for guessing the family member, you clever readers


	8. Interlude

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a little scene that was originally part of the previous chapter but didn't quite fit. My muse won't let me finish the next full chapter without posting this, so enjoy.  
> Chapter nine should be up by Tuesday. See you then :)

Bruce was lying on the thick mattress in the playroom when Tony swung by to check on him following his heart to heart with Cap. Patching up the god and the conflicting emotions that seeing him in such a state had provoked had done a number on the doctor’s control. The twisted carcasses of three cruiser tanks were testament to the Hulk’s equal displeasure at the current situation.

 

Tony sighed, flipping one armoured vehicle over to inspect the damage. He’d really hoped that they would last a few more weeks but keeping the room stocked with things that Hulk enjoyed smashing was a small price to pay for said destruction being confined to this part of the tower. Hulk did love ripping military vehicles apart, go figure.

A small opening was revealed as the Iron Man suit made short work of clearing the larger pieces of wreckage. A carbonadium ball the size of a boulder rolled unevenly across the floor. That one had lasted almost a month and the genius winced to think of the power with which Hulk’s fist must have impacted to dent it that thoroughly.

 The armour collapsed back into itself as Tony walked carefully through the now accessible door. He tried to avoid wearing the suit around the Hulk; it had taken a long time for the big guy to trust Tony and he didn't want to do anything to jeopardise it.

Designed so that Banner had a place to move into that did not resemble a scrapyard, the small room featured a bed, a change of clothes and currently,one lightly snoring scientist.

Snorting indulgently, Stark lowered himself down to the mattress and carded his hand through the other man’s springy curls.

 “Wake up sleepy head,” he sing-songed, “time for all good scientists to be in proper beds.”

 “Mm not a good scientist” came the mumbled response but Bruce pushed himself up and blinked muzzily at his surroundings.

 “How are you doing with this?”

“Not amazingly,” Bruce replied, accepting his glasses and pulling on an oversized M.I.T sweatshirt. “The other guy is struggling with what has been done to him and what we have between us.” He looked seriously into Tony’s tired eyes. “We have to tell the team. It didn’t impact on them before, it wasn’t any of their business, but now with this.

He trailed off.

“I know. Let’s go to bed. We’ll tell them in the morning.” 

 Both men silently left the room and began the trek down to the workshop; they were smart enough to know that neither of them would be able to get any true sleep on a night like this but it was nice to pretend.

“Will you be okay to be around him?” Tony continued.”I've got Dummy in there now and I can’t even begin to worry about that, but he’s acting pretty suicidal, not that I blame him, and if he goes for himself again, I don’t know if we’ll be able to stop him.”

 “We can’t keep him in the tank, regardless of his mental state Tony. If he really is suicidal...”

“I know.”

Bruce sank down onto the sofa and smiled wryly as Butterfingers rolled over with his tablet in his outstretched claw.

 “Tony?”

 “Yeah?”

 “What you had to do...to keep us safe..I.. _we_...We don’t hold it against you.”

Tony paused by the coffee machine, four shots of espresso sloshing into one cup. An honest look of thanks flashed across his face before he turned his billion-dollar grin at the other man.

“Come on Bruce,” he joked, sliding into his chair and pulling up the bookmarked folders on slavery, “we have a _lot_ of work to do.”

 

 

 

 


	9. Letters: Part 1

Darcy’s pout as the package failed to do anything 'freaky' went largely unnoticed as the two resident geniuses cleared a workspace for it.

“It bit _me_ ,” she sulked, “how comes it didn’t bite you?”

“It bit you? How did a package-”

“Hugie and Mewnie did it.”

The word blank hardly did justice to the expressions on Tony and Bruce’s faces at that moment. Darcy sighed irritably and used the tip of a biro to swivel the small chest around.

“There,” she explained, pointing at the intricate clasp. Two bronze ravens stood out in stark relief, their outstretched wings connecting and keeping the box shut.

“The winged messengers of Odin: Hugin and Munin.” Coulson explained as he pulled the chest closer to him.  
Darcy shrugged, as if to say ’yeah, that’s what I just said’, but she leaned in closer just in case, because if that box was planning on taking a bite out of the stuffy agent, she wanted a good view.

Disappointingly to her, but to the distinct relief of the three men, the clasp opened smoothly to reveal a chest brimming with-

  
“ _Paper_!? Auughhh!” Tony let out a cry of disgust and pushed his swivel chair violently away from the table.“Just once!” He moaned, “Just _once_ I want to be impressed by someone else’s tech. I mean, this is a whole different species and they write on paper?” He turned mournful eyes on Bruce. “Why couldn’t it be a hologram Brucie? I wanted a cute little Thor on my desk telling us that we’re his only hope. Why do I never get what I want?”

The two men, used to such theatrics, ignored him completely. Darcy, similarly disappointed at the contents of the chest, went back to twirling the pen in her fingers.  
Cautiously, Bruce lifted the topmost page and scanned it, a look of disgust passing over his features.

  
“It looks like your bill of ownership,” he directed at the Shield agent,

_“The being known previously as Loki Odinson is now the sole property and chattel of the Midgardian Philip James Coulson._

_The being know previously as Loki Odinson has forfeited all rights previously awarded to him as both a member of the Asgardian courts and those awarded to all free citizens of the Nine Realms._

_The being previously known as Loki Odinson has forfeited the rights to his previous names and titles, the right to own properties and the right to seek and hold any form of paid employment._

_All possessions previously belonging to it will become the property of the master to do with as he wishes._

_The being previously known as Loki Odinson has been outfitted with a Nidavellir collar which contains the supplicant’s magics and limits the use of which to the owners wishes. The collar is keyed to the voice of the Midgardian Philip James Coulson and will administer punishment in the absence of the owner if said owner is not present when an infringement occurs_.”

He trailed off in disgust, passing to the paper over to Tony who continued

“ _The Midgardian Philip James Coulson is solely responsible for the care of the being previously known as Loki Odinson. As accepted master of the supplicant, he is required to provide sustenance for the ongoing survival of his slave unless he wishes to withhold it as punishment_

_As a slave, the being known previously as Loki Odinson will follow any and all orders given to him by his master and submit to any punishment given; failure to comply will result in severe punishment from the Nidavellir collar, additional to that which his master chooses to inflict._

_He is the property of his master; body, mind and soul._

  
Agent, this is wrong.”

  
Coulson, looking uncharacteristically fazed by the matter of fact manner in which the enslavement of a sentient being was so calmly laid out, took the offending sheet from Tony.  
The shimmer that passed over the page went unnoticed by the others, too wrapped up in their own revulsion at what this meant for the stricken god.  
Phil caught the first few sentences that curled into existence across the changing page and folded it neatly under his arm.

Stark was occupied with rubbing soothing circles across Dr. Banner’s back and whispering into his curly mop of hair. Darcy, looking confused and more than a little affronted, had returned her attentions to the contents of the chest. The thick folder she extracted and passed to Coulson appeared to be an inventory. 

With a sickly sinking sensation, the Shield agent flicked through the thick, gold edged pages. Over a thousand years worth of accumulated possessions were laid out in neat spidery handwriting. Occult items, _Thranuon Såe Vial x 1_ , listed next to _hairbrushes x 3_ and _blank parchment rolls x 12._

' _All possessions previously belonging to the slave will become the property of the master.'_

  
The phrases of that repulsive document burnt through his mind. It was a horrifying prospect to loose your freedom, but for everything you owned to also become the property of your captor? And Coulson hadn't even _captured_ Loki, he had been _given_ him. A gift. An act of reconciliation. A war trophy. It disgusted him on a visceral level.

The next four items to leave the chest were books. Not further lists of seized goods, but heavy leather bound tomes that breathed of age and secrets.  
Darcy scooped up the thinnest book and flipped through.

“Oh look! Pictures.” She exclaimed happily, holding it outwards and showing the double page illustration to the men around the table.  
Blood-red eyes glared malevolently out of a snarling blue face. It was a monster, that much was clear, with cruelly curved horns and slashing claws.

“Don’t worry,” Darcy chirped and flicked one page on, “the good guy gets it.” And it was true. The next picture depicted a brave blond warrior thrusting his sword through the beast. Black ichor burst from the wound and splattering artistically across the text.

“It looks like a book of fairy tales,” said Bruce, feeling more capable of rejoining the conversation now that it had veered slightly away from the stark reality of Loki’s slavery.“It doesn’t make sense though. Why was that in there?”

Tony shrugged, leafing through the other books he could draw no conclusions. Unlike the documents that had preceded them, the language that filled the aged pages was the angular script of Asgardian runes. And, unlike the collection of fairy stories, these had no pictures to hint at their content.

“I’ll get Jarvis to scan them in and run them through a translator. At least then they won’t be on _paper_.” He pronounced the word as if it was something dirty as he unloaded the pile of books into Butterfinger’s waiting grip.  
A look passed between the two scientists and a sudden change came over Tony. All seriousness fled his expression as he leaned back in his chair and cast an appreciative look at Darcy. Darcy, who had not been born yesterday, gave him a level look in return.

“Doll face? Is there _any_ chance you could go fetch-”

“Look, Mr. Stark,” she cut him off, “if you want me out, that’s fine, but just tell me okay? I’m a big girl. I’ve been working on a Shield funded research base for nearly a year so I can handle being told when I’m not wanted.”

Bruce felt bad, watching as she snatched up her bag and tromped up the stairs, but this conversation was going to be difficult enough without someone in the room that Hulk did not know.  
Attuned to the mounting tension in the room, Coulson straightened in his seat and turned to give the men his full attention. Bruce was fidgeting, his fingers tracing a skittering pattern across the work surface before stilling as the engineer’s hand moved to cover them.  
Coulson’s eyebrows raised. Clint and Natasha had informed him that the two men were close. The eccentric billionaire had spent a fortune on both the latest in radiology equipment for the private lab he had provided for the scientist, and had refitted entire floors of his tower to allow space for Hulk friendly areas.

“Gentlemen,” he began, “While I am...honoured that you feel you need to inform me of your relationship status. I have no prejudice against...” He stopped at Tony’s unmanly snort. Even Bruce was struggling to keep his smile from splitting into a grin.

“You? You thought that _I_? And _Bruce_? Oh God!” He broke into a fit of giggles,managing briefly to bring himself under control before catching sight of Bruce’s faux affronted expression and breaking out all over again.

“Oh Brucie...don’t look like that! I love you truly, passionately and deeply but can you imagine what Pepper would _do_ to me? There wouldn't be enough of me left to bury in a matchbox!”

Seeing the agent’s blank look, he schooled himself and cleared his throat before continuing. “No, Bruce and I are not together together.                                                Look, when you were out of it we had a bit of a run in with Ross and his merry band of gun slinging asshats.  
They turn up at my tower with a lawyer of all things, and demand that we hand Bruce over because he was, and I quote, ’property of the U.S military’. See, Ross had decided that as Brucie here was working for him at the time, and because the research that he did lead to the creation of our big green guy was being done for him, that made the product of the research his property as well.”

“They brought a lawyer? I knew General Ross was a fool but I didn’t peg him for being suicidal.”

“Agent, you know me too well. Now there are some battles you can fight with words, some with tactics and some, and these are my favourite, with a kick-ass suit of armour, but a lawyer, you fight with a lawyer.”

And if there is one thing that a man with Tony Stark’s wealth and reputation has, it is a _bloody_ good lawyer.

“He basically humiliated the poor guy out of court,” Bruce explained, “made this fifty-year old look like he’d only just passed the bar. It was...satisfying to watch.”

“But,” and here Tony’s voice grew serious again, “he did bring up a good point. Technically, whoever owns the patent to the Hulk serum can lay claim to its ingredients, the key one being-”

“My blood. And so whoever owns that patent...owns me.”

An oppressive silence fell over the men as the scientists gave the Shield agent a minute to process the repercussions of this statement.  
With a sigh, Bruce went on,“That patent is now the property of Stark Industries and that contract is watertight; should anything happen to Tony, it transfers to Pepper, then to someone else we both trust and so on. Ross can't touch me without being sued to hell for attempted theft. The only down side of this otherwise perfect arrangement is that, in the eyes of the law at least, I'm property.”

“We had to find some pretty creative loopholes to get this to work.” Tony cut in quickly, hating the awful stillness that this brought over his friend even now. “To get the courts to rule that anything formed as a result of the Hulk serum was tied into the patent, but it was the only way to keep Bruce safe.”

His eyes bored into Phil’s seeking...approval? Absolution? With a startling shock of insight, he realised that he was possibly the only older man that the genius even listened to. For him to be seeking...validation upon this choice, it spoke a lot to him about how Tony really viewed him.

“Thank you, for telling me.” He settled on eventually. “I believe that you have done everything you could to keep Dr Banner safe. I'm not sure if it will help much as the level to which this has effected you is so different, but the knowledge that he is not the only person in such a situation may help Loki, if only a little.”

“That’s why we told you.” Tony gave an elaborate yawn, stretching his arms upwards and loudly cracking several vertebrae. “Gods I am getting old. Brucie and me pulled an all nighter, so we’re heading to bed now. _Separate_ beds, Agent. I downloaded some stuff for you, it’s on the pad by the door.” His speech was punctuated by a further wide yawn. “Mnmm yeah...oh books! Jarvis’ll bleep you when they’re translated..have them..sent to your pad.”

Bruce, tired of Tony’s persisting to talk regardless of the fact that he was falling asleep standing up, scooped am arm around the other man’s waist and steered him over to one of the narrow bunks kept specifically for exhaustion breaks.  
Phil took this as his cue to leave. He needed a chance to read that letter properly.

 

* * *

 

Steve, having spent the last half an hour meticulously clearing the kitchen of all traces of his coffee binge that was not, scrubbed one hand frustratedly through his hair.

He hated this. Not having anything to do. Tony and Bruce had probably worked through the night looking for a solution to the Loki issue. Agent Coulson, Phil, he corrected himself, had most likely spent a well earned proper rest in the arms of his...well Steve wasn’t entirely sure what went on between the three Shield agents, but at least they were doing something productive, even if it was just sleep.

His stomach gurgled discontentedly, breaking him out of his thoughts. Since the serum he had found himself with an almost insatiable hunger, able to put away a meal intended for four people in one sitting; he regularly woke up hungry and guiltily resigned to the prospect of a midnight kitchen raid. Tony had only laughed when he admitted this but had taken to leaving energy bars in convenient locations around the tower for such eventualities. In fact, Steve thought, the only person he had seen eat just as much had been..

“Shoot. Jarvis?”

“Yes Master Rogers?” Inquired the cool voice.

“Has anyone brought Loki any food since he arrived?”

“Negative Master Rogers. Would you like me to instruct Dummy to bring our guest a protein shake?”

Steve, who had seen the green/grey sludge that Tony happily knocked back in the lab, didn’t respond but instead pulled open the fridge to search for some eggs. He was pretty sure that feeding Loki a Dummy shake would count as cruelty to prisoners.

 

Dummy rolled back on his treads as Captain America, sans shield but wielding two full plates of omelette, entered the tank.  
Looking hopelessly around at the lack of any surfaces, save the bunk that Loki was occupying, Steve eventually settled for setting his own plate on the floor before perching on the footed of the bunk.

Up close, Loki looked absolutely terrible. Cheekbones that once gave the man an aristocratic flair now jutted out, the pale skin stretched thin over them. The omelette now seemed far too little far too late.

Instructing Dummy to fill a glass of water from the tap, Steve moved so that he was supporting Loki, his back resting against the stronger man’s chest.  
Accepting the cup from the inquisitively beeping robot, he tilted it to the god’s lips and waited...and waited.

When it looked as though even that action was beyond the emaciated man, he finally took a sip. Emboldened by this small victory, Steve gently rubbed Loki’s throat, encouraging the liquid to move down. That was, of course, when green eyes flicked open and everything went straight to hell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please don't kill me leaving it like this, I looked at the word count and realised that if I just kept going this one chapter would be longer than most of the fic so far, so 'letters' has been split into two chapters.  
> The next few chaps will probably be about this length as well; we are well and truly into this story now.
> 
> A.N. I have been asked how long Reconciliation is going to be, my estimate is around 30 chapters so far but that may increase.  
> Thank you for reading :)


	10. Letters: Part Two

 

Stomach grumbling and with a burning desire to confirm what he thought he’d seen down in Stark’s workshop, Phil decided to kill two birds with one stone and swing back to the room that Natasha had lead him to last night.                                                               B If Clint had been in that room for more than one night, there would definitely be food.

Five minutes later, and only in the second place he’d looked, his questing hands pulled free the pack of mini-donuts that had been taped to the underside of the desk.

Clint’s habit of hoarding food drove Natasha to near homicidal rage, and when you are facing a trained assassin that is never a good position to be in. Logically, she could see why he kept food around; she’d done it herself when she was new to Shield, having spent  too many years unsure where her next meal was coming from and what she would have to do to earn it. It was the fact that, within a week, every nook and cranny in every single safe house or bunker that they shared would be filled to the brim with donuts and cookies when that valuable space could be filled with _useful_ things: like knives.

 Popping one of the sugary treats into his mouth, Phil took in the welcome sight of a living space frequently occupied by his agents. 

 Piles of dirty clothes lay strewn in scattered piles on the floor. Clint resisted picking them up until he could barely see the floorspace and argued that he always put his socks in the laundry basket (though this was purely due to the fact that they could be balled up and used for trick shots) so really, what was the problem? 

The desk that he’d propped the Starkpad up on boasted a familiar wealth of make-up, knives, perfume bottles and sections of arrow shafts in various states of deconstruction. Similarly, the wardrobe he’d found his clothes in earlier that morning contained their familiar leather body armour and casual clothes alongside his suits, just waiting for him to return to them. 

 Settling down onto the unmade bed, he told himself firmly that he was not disappointed to find it empty of occupants. It had past eight in the morning and he knew that the Black Widow did not lie-in and, if she wanted a sparring partner, Clint would be dragged out of bed screaming if need be. Phil had seen it happen.

 The parchment, because paper that thick and gilded could not be called anything else, crackled gently as he unfolded it and lay it out on his lap. Eyes, far too used to A4 documents and computer screens, strained for a moment, adjusting for the wide spread of the page.                                                                                                                   BAnd, yes, just as before, as he brought the words of the slavery document into focus, the bold text danced and separated into the thinner lines and format of a letter.

 

_Son of Coul,_

_I send this missive to you in the strictest state of confidence and secrecy. What I impart to you this day has the potential to cause great damage to those which both of us hold dear so I implore you, keep that which you read to as few a people as you can hold within your trust_

_There are eyes everywhere and I take a great risk in penning this letter, so I shall be as brief as I can._

_I have entrusted my son Loki to your keeping. Though I can never again acknowledge him as such, in my heart he will always be my child as much as one I had sired._

_When he is ready, please tell him this._

_This is not a future I would have chosen and it causes me deep and grievous pain that I have done this to one I once called kin but I could see no other course that would allow him to live._

_The grievances that you lay at my son’s feet are extensive, and though reparations have been concluded between myself and your Furious leader, you are within your rights to demand his death, but there is knowledge that you must be privy to, before commanding his execution._

_Thor tells me that he spoke of Loki’s adoption to you and your companions but he has not revealed the full truth of the matter_

_I found Loki as a newborn upon the barren ice world of Jotunheim._

_Though he is of that same world I could not leave him there to die and so I brought him back to Asgard with me where his innate shapeshifting magic allowed him to take Aesir form._

_A deep love formed in my chest that day and it has neither died nor diminished._

_Loki learnt of his true heritage at a most unfortunate time. Thor had recently been banished and the time of the Odinsleep was upon me. Kinghood was thrust upon him and he had only just discovered that his entire identity had been formed upon a lie. A deep well of bitterness and resentment had grown within his heart and though I assured him that my love for him had not changed, his hatred was too strong._

_His actions from that point were...inadvisable._

_By the time I had returned to myself, Loki had fallen into a state of desperate and conflicted mania. In his madness, he lured Laufey, the king of Jotunheim, to Asgard and slew him before his generals. Then, taking control of the Bifrost, he attempted to destroy the entire realm of Jotunheim._

_Thor was able to prevent this act of devastation, but we were too late to save my son. Believing himself betrayed by all who loved him, he let himself fall into the void and became lost to us._

_Though we searched tirelessly, he had drifted from the branches of Yggdrasil and even Heimdall the All Seeing could not fathom his course. In the time between his fall and his return Midgard through the Tesseract portal, a great change had come over him. All the seeds of doubt and resentment that had taken root had flourished into gnarled thorns which strangled his mind, leaving burning trails of despair and madness in their wake._

_When he was delivered to us once more, our healers found tainted strands of the Tesseract wrapped deep within him and a binding of extreme malice ensnaring his will._

_The dark place that he fell to was not a merciful one. The beast that inhabited it took great pleasure in destroying Loki’s will and twisting him to its own vile purpose._

_Truthfully, my son had been a slave to that power and never made aware of it._

_I argued this case before the courts, but such a malady was not enough to absolve up him of the crimes of which he had committed while in full possession of his faculties._

_The people of Jotunheim demanded that Loki, as a Jotun himself, must be held accountable for his actions and subject to their sentence for regicide and attempted genocide._

_Upon Asgard, we refer to this punishment as the sloughing. Thor tells me that on your world, even when a crime is most despicable and abhorrent in nature, the punishment is rarely death. Even when justice cannot be met without bloodshed, the execution is made a painless for the condemned as possible. Lest you believe that a life in slavery is a cruel and drawn out sentence compared to that which awaited him, let me explain the fate I have saved him from._

_The condemned Jotun is taken to the coldest point of their realm and is bound with his arms outstretched. Cuts are made along the underarms and freezing water is poured upon them. This is repeated until deep frostbite has set in. The Jotun, often half mad now with pain, is brought to a hot spring where his arms are submerged in heated water. Then when the flesh hangs loose, it is ripped free of the arms in great sections of skin and muscle. The process is then repeated upon the legs and, if he still has not died from shock and agony, his torso is left for the carrion birds to feast upon._

_You can see, I hope, why I could never subject him to such a fate._

_Still, I had to offer the courts a suitable alternative or face having the choice taken out of my hands._

_Between us, my wife and I devised a plan that would potentially save our child’s life and also remove him from the sights of the being that may still seek him following his failure with the Chitauri._

_Honour is a trait that both Aesir and Jotun share, though many of my subjects would be shocked to hear those words upon my lips. If I had handed Loki over to them they would would have executed him, that is certain, but once his spirit had moved on, the matter would be closed and Loki’s soul would be free from the dishonour of his deeds._

_To a Jotun, the idea of living in such a state of dishonour would be intolerable; many who have brought such shame upon themselves seek to end their own lives than face continued existence._

_To become another's slave and to be denied even the right to oblivion: that was a punishment that many a Jotun would rather face the sloughing than submit to._

_And so, I decreed that Loki would be sent to Midgard and into the possession of those he had most wronged._

_I rejected the fitting of the Nidavellir Collar for as long as I could, but I am not the only one who had learned of the soft punishments that your realm imposes upon their criminals. The slavery contract binds Loki’s magic and denies him the rights of a free man, but the collar has its own magic and my son will fight it always._

_You may think what you want of me. I am not proud of what I have been forced to do but I am a king and I have to do what is best for my people. If Loki had not been appropriately punished, war would have surely broken out between Jotunheim and Asgard. Though it tears the heart from my breast, I cannot save one life at the cost of thousands of innocents._

_I have done all that I can for my son. While you now hold control of his magics and can limit his use of them to your will, I feared for his sanity should he also be bound to his natural form. I granted to him the power to maintain his Asgardian shape and also that of a bird, so that he could pass through the Bifrost more easily._

_Our healers have done what they can to restore his mind but the collar will have a profound effect upon him and he shall need all his strength if he is to heal fully._

_I have sent books that will aid you should you wish to help my son. If you feel that reconciliation cannot be reached without his death, there is nothing I can do to stop you. I only pray that his death will be swifter at your hands than that of either of his home worlds._

_We will not converse again, Son of Coul, for I cannot be seen to show any interest in a slave who is now no business of mine._

_I wish you luck._

 

The letter ended with the intertwined raven standard of Odin, All father of Asgard. 

Coulson pushed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets so hard that it hurt. He needed to read the books from Asgard and he still had no idea how a set of fairy tales was supposed to help. Maybe there was one entitled _’The Chained God and the Desperately Confused Mortal’_.

Scooping up his Starkpad and determinedly ignoring the Captain America background that Stark had decided it couldn't do without, he had just time to pull up the flashing document icon before the alarm began blaring down the hallway.

 

* * *

It was only serum enhanced reflexes that saved Steve from taking a knife to his neck. Whipping his head back sharply, he took a firm grip of Loki’s wrist and slammed it repeatedly against the plastic sides of the bed until the blade clattered to the floor. Digging the fingers of his free hand around the collar, he used the leverage to push the struggling man back down, kicking the knife out of reach. When his foot didn’t impact, he risked a look down only to see the last visible section of the silver metal shift apart into a pile of grey sand.

The angry words died in his throat as he realised just how hot the metal of the collar had gotten beneath his grip.

 “Who?” Loki screamed at him, his own fingers scrabbling under the burning metal, eyes rolling back in pain.

“It..it’s me? Steve, I mean Captain Amer-” 

Loki’s scream of pure frustrated rage cut through even the sharp alarm that had brought Clint and Natasha running into the chamber just outside the tank. 

“Who..has..claimed..me?” Every word sounded as though they had been ripped from Loki's throat with barbed hooks.

 “Me.” 

Steve looked up into the stoic face of Phil Coulson, walking determinedly passed the other two agents, through the doors of the tank and standing resolutely in front of the god.

“It was me.”

The whine that tore through Loki’s clenched teeth as his body lurched from the bunk was almost animal in nature and Steve struggled not to reach out and hold the god back. He was certain that he would do more harm than good if he triedl

The super soldier and the three Shield agents watched with shock as Loki struggled, it appeared, under a great invisible weight. The skin around the collar had blistered and Loki’s knees buckled under the effort of keeping himself on his feet.

With a sick lurch of realisation, Phil knew what the god was fighting against, but it was too late. With a short cry of exhausted despair, Loki sank down to his knees before them.

Eyes filled with tears and the malevolent golden sparks of the collar’s magic bored into Phil’s, and much as he desperately wished to tear himself away from that gaze he could not begin to try.

 “Have you accepted me?” 

 The voice was toneless and its lack of inflection hurt Phil far more than the shrieking ever did. It was so hopelessly lost. The voice of a man who had given up and wished only for death.

Phil did the only thing he could do and sank down onto his knees, mirroring the god’s posture, and cupped the thin face in his hands.

 “I have. I accept you, Loki.”

 And the magic rushed through them like a wave and they clung to each other as they drowned in it.

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it took so long! I really wanted to get the tone of the letter right. I hope you enjoyed the long chapter. It's about to get interesting for Loki :)


	11. A Cornered Tiger

 

Tony Stark wondered what he had done to make world hate him so very _very_ much.

There were, contrary to popular belief, a great many ways in which Tony enjoyed the process of waking up. The warm naked body of a model or three was always a good fallback, or the wonderful sinful heat of a talented mouth slowly sinking down on his cock. Those were perfectly acceptable options.

A shrieking alarm jolting him awake from far too little sleep, causing him to fall straight out of the narrow lab-bed in an undignified scrambling mess, and then have to execute a desperate lunge to avoid the rapidly expanding bulk of a hulking out Bruce did not feature on that list at all.

By the time he’d reached the tank, with Javis appraising him of the situation on route and a hastily grabbed repulser prototype and casing strapped to his arm, there was little left for him to do.

Steve had carried Agent Coulson out and put him down in one of the viewing chairs. He seemed a bit disorientated but he was lucid and trying desperately not to look like a swooning fanboy as he soaked up all the attention that Captain America was giving him.

The manner in which the two other agents were clustered around Loki did not look good though. As he keyed in the access codes, the thought briefly crossed his mind that they may have actually killed him. There didn’t seemed any other explanation for why Hawkeye would intentionally disarm himself in front of the guy who’d mind-fucked him. Agent Coulson’s rule about ’no bows near demi-gods’ was obviously still in full effect, but the weapons the younger man had kept on him had been placed deliberately off to one side. As he walked through the second set of doors he noticed that Natasha had a similar pile of arsenal next to her, just out of easy reach. 

Tony wasn't stupid enough to think that the collection of firearms, knives and arrows on the tank floor was the entirety of the two agent’s arsenals, but the display was clear enough to promise that no immediate harm was upcoming for whoever they had cornered.

Shaking the dregs of sleep from his mind, Tony suddenly realised that he had seen this scene before.

 

About a month after he had kidnapped Captain America, Fury had kindly requested that they investigate a small disturbance kicking off on the East Side. Of course, he hadn’t phrased it _exactly_ like that, but Tony didn’t take orders so he processed them through his amazingly adaptive brain until they came out with the right (by his standards) level of respect.

A teenage girl, who probably should have spent less time on her mobile and more time paying attention when crossing busy roads, had been knocked down by a truck. An unfortunate event to be sure but not unremarkable. The tiny problem was however, that by the time the ambulance crew had arrived on the scene, the rather mousy looking teenager had somehow become a fully grown and severely pissed off Bengal tiger.

Having no experience with the X-gene in her family and coming into the full manifestation of her powers shortly after being flung a good few feet down the street by a Suzuki Equator, she responded predictably, and panicked.

By the time Tony had a visual, two squad cars and an animal control unit as well as the already present ambulance were adding to the general state of chaos.

The police were doing their best to keep the public back but when the average American gets even relatively close to something marginally dangerous their reactions are either to:

A. Scream and panic and generally make things worse, or

B. Try to get as close as possible while filming the entire event on their camera phone.

Neither of these reactions are anything approaching helpful.

Cap had been on ground and assisting in setting up a perimeter while the two Shield agents went to help the animal control officers. Bruce had decided to sit this one out having made a snide comment about ’inflicting one dangerous beast on another’ and skulked off to his lab. Tony had made a mental note to work on his colleague’s sterling levels of self-respect, but in hindsight, the Hulk’s considerable talents probably would not have helped in this particular case.

Easing up on his repulsers, needing to keep airborne in case the tiger made a break for it but wanting to be close enough to hear what was going on, he saw Clint arguing with the animal control men.

Natasha told him later that the officer with the tranquilliser gun was having a hard time getting a clean shot as the animal was not behaving normally; acting almost as though it knew that he was trying to shoot it.

What Tony saw was Barton yank the gun off the flustered man, pass it calmly to Natasha, and walk confidently out towards the snarling tiger.

The crowd, predictably, went wild. It was hard to decide whether the screaming idiots with outstretched camera phones or the frantic policemen’s shouted orders that prompted the latest volley of spine trembling roars from the enraged tiger, but Clint, who had evidently taken leave of what little sense he had, was putting down his fucking weapons and walking even closer!

It was only a sharp gesture from Natasha that had him lower his outstretched hand, his gauntlet vibrating from  the charge it was seconds away from releasing. Confused and concerned for his teammate’s safety and sanity, Tony watched the archer making slow and wide circles around the growling tiger, his head slightly bowed and his arms held open and slightly away from his body.

If this show of defencelessness was working, the airborne genius did not see it, for all the tiger had done was focus its full attention on the man that would most likely prove its next meal. Tail lashing the air, haunches raised and ears flattened, it curled back its lips and snarled fiercely, treating the archer to an intimate view of its dead,y sharp teeth.

“Sir?” Javis’ voice cut through the suit’s comms. “I do believe that Agent Barton knows what he is doing.”

Tony was fixated with the sight of his team member walking even closer to the big cat, hands still outstretched and eyes lowered.

“It is statistically unlikely for a tiger to attack prey face on sir, they are more likely to flee and seek an opportunity where they can hunt from a stealthier position. Furthermore, Agent Barton is showing considerable awareness of feline body language and is taking care not to exhibit any behaviours that the tiger in question may translate as threatening. Note that he is allowing the tiger space to move as he approaches; it is a cornered tiger that it most likely to attack.”

While Jarvis’ reassuring tone would normally have worked wonders on his creator’s frazzled nerves, it would have been far more effective if the tiger had not chosen that precise moment to let loose a hideous roar and throw itself at the agent.

 

Watching Clint go from approaching a dangerous animal, to intercepting its leap and sinking his fingers into its luxuriant ruff, to holding a frightened and crying teenager in his arms was a sight that would stay with Tony for a long long time.

The girl, Isobel, needed a lot of calming down before she was ready to be helped back home. Thankfully, Fury had a contact for these kinds of things and the last the team heard, she had been offered a scholarship at some school in Westchester that dealt with these kind of things.

 

 

Finally getting a look at the god from over Natsha’s shoulder, Tony could see the damage the last few days had taken on the god. Although, damage was perhaps the wrong word now. 

Before, when he had gotten the worst of the blood and gore off the other man he had been shocked to see just how thin he was. The ruined tunic he had arrived in had been a lost cause and the sweatshirt Tony had replaced it with had hung off the man’s emaciated frame. Even with the medical drips that Bruce kept refitting, it had looked like the god would take weeks if not months to recover that amount of muscle mass.

The magical backlash of Agent’s acceptance seemed to have covered all those months of intensive care and feeding in one go. His skin had regained its lost elasticity and his hair shone with a renewed sheen but

Tony simply could not get over how painfully young the man looked.

It wasn’t although he had de-aged or anything, the thought of a teenage Loki was almost more terrifying than an adult one, but all the deep lines that madness and exhaustion had traced along his face had vanished.

Quite frankly, if getting a hug from Coulson could make that amount of difference then he would have people lining up for them. 

 

The destructive madness might have gone, but the unearthly wide eyes and harsh shallow breathing was a good indicator that the god was still not the full picnic.

As Tony drew closer he could see why the two agents, who  he previously didn’t think could be this close to the god without also impaling him with either a knife or arrow, were making such a performance of appearing unarmed.

“He tried to attack me,” Steve called through the open doors. Tony had neglected to close them due to the fact that they were tromping in and out en masse so often that it would be simpler to lay out a door mat.

The super soldier did not sound accusatory, quite the opposite. He sounded almost apologetic that he had put himself in a position that allowed the god to do so.

“I guess that thing on his neck didn’t like it so much.”

Loki had pushed himself down into the furthest corner of the tank, his fingers twitching absently to the metal of the collar and the tender skin beneath it before falling listlessly back to his lap. His eyes did not stop moving for one second, flashing from one Avenger to another, lingering only on the crouched form of the Hulk just on the other side of the wall. A low whimper passed involuntarily from his lips and the god scowled furiously but could not disguise the tremors that wracked his slight frame.

“Sir?” Natasha called back through. “We can’t get close enough to him to help. We don’t even know what that flash did to him. He scuttled back here the moment you let go.” She took a moment to watch the god fidget with the collar, then worry his lips, then back to the collar. All the time his eyes kept darting about the room, taking in the doors, the floor, the people, always moving and never stopping. “What do you want us to do?”

All eyes turned to Coulson. Tony's flicked briefly back to the god when he heard the panicked breathing speed up considerably.

Intending to offer some comfort, the genius reached out to clasp the younger man’s shoulder. In a move that made even Natasha blink, the snarling god threw off his hand and Tony had a split second to register that he had a knife pointed at him before Coulson’s shout brought Loki’s head smashing down to the floor with bruising force.

For a moment, the only sounds were the broken cries from the god as the other looked on in complete shock.  Steve stood in the tank entrance with Phil, having launched himself forward when the grey sand shifted over the floor. Agent Coulson’s hand hovered uselessly halfway to his mouth, as though he could have stopped that word from emerging if he had just been quick enough. But he had said it, unthinkingly, and this was the consequence. 

Loki’s legs were cramped uncomfortably under him and his arms lay flung down on the floor and out to the sides. The knife had just begun to disintegrate and it flowed through his twitching fingers. The god’s face was hidden but they could see the rictus of pain that passed through him each time the gold magic sparked along the punishment collar. Even Natasha and Clint, standing with previously concealed firearms ready in their hands, looked uncomfortable this blatant display of slavery.

And of course, that was the very moment that the elevator doors pinged cheerfully open and Jarvis announced with a deadpan sense of humour, “Miss Potts for you,sir.”

Tony face-palmed, realised that he had just done so with the repulser prototype, winced and walked out to meet his doom.

Really, what had he done to make world hate him so very _very_ much?


	12. Promises

 

In the beginning there was a cave and a plan and an escape. Thus the first Iron Man suit was born. As time passed, the suit was reincarnated in many forms.  

It was adaptable, powerful and utterly brilliant, just, Tony mentally added, like its creator.

In his suit, he had faced down terrorists, rogue mutants, super powered criminals, bastards in mech suits and motherfucking aliens.            

As the elevator doors slid ominously open, Tony wished like hell that he was wearing his suit. It wouldn’t do him the slightest bit of good against this dangerous an opponent of course, but he might have been able to escape at least. The chances of getting out of this in one piece however, were dwindling by the second.        

Forcing himself not to baulk, he took in that most dreaded sight. Crisply folded arms, a determined set to the shoulders and, oh gods, the rapid staccato beat of the Louis Vuittons on the hardwood floor of the lift.

Eyes darting quickly around, he saw that Coulson had entered the tank and would never be back out in time to be efficient backup. Tony’s heart sank whe he saw the Hulk hunkered down by the tank entrance, watching the scene playing out before his green eyes with focused impatience.

Hulk had not liked the puny god the first time around, and if he needed to be smashed again, Hulk would enjoy that very much. Hulk liked smashing puny gods so he would watch carefully so he didn't miss his chance.

So, no help in that corner.

Then, with a relief like the sun breaking through the clouds, Tony noticed that Steve had not moved. 

Good. Two against one, he might just be able to swing this. 

Then, with a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, Tony spotted the dawning fear in the captain's eyes as he too took in the sight of that most dreaded foe.

And then, it seemed, there were some battles that even super soldiers knew they could not win. Offering the figure in the lift a sharp nod and throwing Tony a look of sympathy, Captain America turned tail and saved himself. Watching the strategic retreat with only a detached sense of betrayal, Tony found that he almost didn't blame him.

Free from all other targets, cold merciless blue eyes bored into him. Finding himself lacking both armour and allies, Tony sent a quick prayer to any gods that could be bothered to listen and ginned.

“Pep, darling. I can explain _everything_.”

 

 

 

It took Agent Coulson a moment to recognise that the fear that washed through him as the god was thrown down to the ground was not, in fact, his own.

The sickly backwash of emotion faded almost as soon as it had come but if he concentrated, he could almost feel the pressure of the collar holding him down and the gut wrenching loathing that consumed him.

“Loki? Can you sit up please?” 

Green eyes flashed up at him through a curtain of dark hair, incredulity racing through them before being replaced with the familiar glare of barely supressed hatred.

Moving slowly, as though he was unsure of whether the collar would allow him to break the prostrate position, the god unfurled and raised himself upright but still kneeling. It was not lost on any of them that the god did not attempt to stand.

The irony of the situation was not lost on Steve. It was hard to reconcile the image of the maniacally preaching god in Stuttgart, so convinced of his own superiority, with the figure below him.

Desperately needing to look anywhere but into those accusing eyes, he scanned the floor until his eyes settled on the small pile of sand, the colour almost lost against the tiles.

“Agent Coulson?”

“Captain?”

“He had this on him,” Steve opened his hand enough for the other man to see the sand, “It’s what he attacked me with earlier. It was a knife then, but..” He trailed off, unable to explain the magical metamorphosis.

Natasha craned her head to look at the shimmering grains. She had experience with a number of weaponised powders, mostly poisons and a few with hallucinogenic properties, but unfortunately, magically reassembling daggers had never entered her arsenal.

“Thank you Captain Rogers. Could you keep it on you, just for a little while? Now, Loki.” He lowered himself to one knee, bringing him eye level with the god.

“You and I are going to have a discussion. Now, I would prefer for this to be a civilised conversation but I can just as easily do this the other way.”

The glob of saliva that Loki spat at him in answer landed just below his right eye.

He had a moment to see the satisfaction in the god’s own eyes before they widened in pain and he began whimpering as the collar sparked with malignant golden flecks.

Coulson took a moment to wipe the spittle from his face before calmly refolding the handkerchief and placing it back in his pocket. Clint looked positively murderous and Phil regretted for a moment that his agent was forced to be in such close proximity to a man who had hurt him so deeply without being granted a kill shot.

He maintained eye contact until the last of the sparks had died away, watching the god shudder and wretch.

“Has it stopped?” He queried politely.

“Ye- _esss_ ” the word was more of a hiss, spat through the tightly gritted teeth of a god too proud to let his head drop.

Agent Coulson took a deep breath a mental step backwards. If things carried on this way then he would inevitably say or do something that he would regret later. This was not his game and this was not his playing field. 

He needed answers but he was intelligent enough to know that if he ordered the god now, if he treated him like a slave, he wouldn’t be able to take it back and he would never gain the man’s trust.

It would have been so much easier, he reflected as he took in the seething eyes, the snarling mouth and clawed fingers, to simply turn his back. He could let Agents Barton and Romanoff extract the answers he needed without compromising his own integrity. He could even leave the room, let them do their worst and then return and play the saviour. Stop the abuse and watch as the thankful victim told him everything for helping them. They had done it before; even now they were watching him for the signals he’d give that would dictate how he wanted this scene to play.

It would be so much easier without the ebbing and flowing sensations of fear and desperation that he kept unintentionally tapping into.

Casting a look through the walls, he could see Stark being verbally castrated by his CEO. 

He had missed Miss Potts, she had such a wonderful way of bringing that man to heel.

“Agent Romanoff?”

“Sir?”

“Does Mr Stark’s tower feature a blue room? I would ask him myself but he seems..unavailable at present.”

A small smile quirks the corners of the assassin’s lips.

“I do believe it does, and I do not think he would mind if we made use of it.”

  

-

 

“-for two weeks! Can you believe the amount of explaining I had to do? But of course _you_ can't because you never have to explain _anything_ , that’s what you have _me_ for! You promised me things would be different Tony, you _promised_. This was bad enough when I was still your assistant and I'd discover my newest headache when I looked at the headlines in the morning but I really thought-”

“Pep, I swear, I was going to call you yesterday but things have gotten a little bit crazy recently and-”

“Recently? What about the conference with Mr. Hanushama? That was five _days_ ago and you are so lucky that I was able to smooth that over with his company. Do you know what happened when I finally got through to Jarvis? He told me that you had put your lab in lockdown because you were creating a **sonic screwdriver**!”

Each word was punctuated with a surprisingly sharp jab to the centre of his arc reactor.

“But the most annoying..the thing that hurt the most..why didn’t you tell me about Phil?”

“Phil? Oh, _Agent_ Phil. Ummm..yes. He’s...awake?”

“I know. I found out when the hospital called me. I shouldn’t have found out from the hospital Tony. He’s my friend and I was the last person to find out. The research student I passed on the way in knew about it before I did!”

“Look, okay, I maybe didn’t handle that quite as perfectly as I possibly could, but, wait? Research student? I sent all the staff home yesterday. We kind of had a little extra terrestrial problem to sort.”

Pepper looked momentarily taken aback but leant so that she could see the group emerging from the tank.

“Isn’t that?”

“Yes, Loki. And yes, the one that destroyed Manhattan. We kind of need to deal with him now but I promise I will make this up to you.”

Pepper shot him a look of pure disdain but allowed him to gently take hold of her by the shoulders and steer her out of the elevator.

“I’ll sign paperwork all you want, I’ll play nice with the shareholders, I won’t put the lab on lockdown for at least another week. I will even,” he cleared his throat and sighed with resignation, “set up that meeting with the asshats at Hammertech about that joint funding charity thingie you wanted. But please, Pep, baby. Believe me. I was not doing this to hurt you and I am not regressing, promise.”

“You keep promising, Tony.” She asserted but allowed herself to relax as he nuzzled into her neck.

“I know, but I try sweetie. I have never tried like this for anyone else in my entire life. You are my life, Pep. I promise.”

“You really promise?”

“Cross my little black heart babe.”

 

 

Steve watched with growing admiration for Tony as he skilfully played his girlfriend away from near homicidal rage to veritable putty in his hands. Not that he believed in emotional manipulation like this of course, oh no. Women were strong and independent and he had a healthy respect for dames even before he was flung into this new empowered century. But Pepper Potts was an intimidating woman and the way that Stark was brushing her hair back and whispering tenderly into her ear while simultaneously making frantic ’get in the lift quickly’ motions with his free hand was a marvel of multitasking.

There was a tense moment when Hulk realised that he couldn’t fit in the lift with the rest of them (it was quite frankly a squeeze to get the green giant in the lift on his own) but after a brief but enthused session of frantic pantomiming from the team, he shrank back into Bruce and the lift doors could shut without Pepper even noticing. 

 

 

Loki,having been roughly bundled and pushed into the back of the small chamber, was turned so that his forehead pressed uncomfortably into the corner, his arms pulled taunt behind his back by Clint and Natasha. He wisely chose to remain silent.

His breath fogged the mirrored walls of the lift but did not completely obscure the blurry reflections of the team around him. He could see them watching him with distrust and the steady press of a handgun against his spine was clear testament to their willingness to harm him. 

With a small and most definitely misplaced sense of pride, he noted that even though he was as close to helpless as he may have ever been in his long life, they were still treating him as a threat.

It...almost helped.

As the room began to move steadily upwards, a sharp chirping filled the small space, prompting the majority of the occupants to pat their pockets. Even Bruce,whose torn trousers were barely preserving his modesty, let alone concealing a mobile phone, checked out of habit.

His attempt to turn his head met with only a stern shove  back in the direction he had previously been facing, the disgraced god had to rely of the distorted glass of the walls to see what was happening.

 

DARCY IS AWESOME OMG

 

Steve looked at the palm sized screen in his hand with utter incomprehension. With a mostly concealed look of indulgence, Coulson plucked the device from him and read the text aloud.

 

“Ah, that would be Miss Darcy Lewis.” He explained. “She delivered the package that came through the Einstein Rosen Bridge portal and it appears that we have her on loan from Miss Foster’s research department. A capable girl, considering the events in New Mexico, a little... _modern_ perhaps.”

“Taser girl?”

“Ah yes, you remember.”

“Yeah, she was fun. Did you ever give back her-”

The words were lost as the elevator shuddered discreetly to a stop and the doors slid open to reveal a wide landing.

Loki felt a small and unwelcome part of himself  take in the sight of tasteful artwork and exotic plants with something akin to homesickness. All of the beauty that he had grown accustomed to in his life had been ripped away and he longed to take refuge in the golden memories of his youth. He crushed those thoughts down ruthlessly; they were all lies at any rate.

Coulson’s practiced fingers danced over the touchscreen of the phone as he was walked out of the lift and onto the plush carpet.

“Arn’t you coming with us Bruce?” Steve asked, noticing that the doctor had held back.

Bruce shrugged, watching intently as Loki was lead out.

“I need to swing down to the lab and collect a few things. Tony and I left a few programmes running earlier that should have finished and I really wouldn’t mind doing some analysis on that sand as well. Plus,” he added dryly, “I should probably change. Unless you think you’ll need the big guy again?”

“No, Doctor Banner, I think we will be able to manage, but any information you can give us on that sand would be greatly appreciated.” Coulson stated with a smile, flicking the handset closed and passing it back to its owner. “Mr Stark, Miss Potts and Miss Lewis will be meeting us in conference room B in 20 minutes. He also wished to extend the use of the blue room for as long as we need it.”

 

As they moved down the hallway, Loki rapidly accessed his options. With mounting panic he came to the realisation that there were distressingly few of them left.

As long as he had this pox-dammed collar on his throat he would not be able to escape. Of course, if he killed the man who, no, he was not going to think that word. No man owned him! He was Loki, son of...of..no. He _never_ had a father and he did not need one. He was still Loki and he would not be so easily cowed. 

He let out a hiss of pain. Not at the thoughts, painful twisted things that they were, but at the flare of warning sparks that shot along the sensitive skin of his neck. The inherent magic in the bastard metal had sensed his dark intentions and was communicating clearly that such things were inappropriate to one in his position. He felt irrational urge to cry. Was he deprived even the luxury of fantasising about how he would kill his mast- no! He refused to stoop so low as to call any man master! But the more he struggled against the hateful thing the more it burned him and he was getting so tired of all the pain.

It took him a second to realise that he’d stopped and that his jailers had allowed it. Squeezing his eyes open just a crack, he saw the assessing look that his..damn this collar and its whore plagued sorcery to the ninth levels of Hel. His.. _keeper_ was giving him. That word at least appeared to appease the restrictive magic enough for it to cease the incessant blistering pain.

Both of the bloodthirsty agents had taken their hands off of him, he noticed. His..keeper, likewise, stood before him unarmed and the Captain was clearly taking his cue from the suited man in front of him.

For a moment, he turned his reach inwards, recoiling as he always did when he felt for his glowing core of magics only to find them dark and denied to him. They slipped from his desperate fingers when once they danced to his call. There was some power there, some small _mercy_ of the Allfather. He could change. He might scare them, catch them off guard but-

“I’m so tired.”

With a start, he realised that those words had slipped out. He rallied, he needed to fight, to push back, never let them see. You could never _ever_ let them see that you were weak but, there was a hand on his shoulder. 

A touch that didn’t hurt. Had it been so long since he felt a touch that didn’t hurt?

“We’re here Loki. Come inside, you can sit down in here. Just a little further, I promise."

Steve pushed open the door for him and they all walked slowly inside the Blue Room. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you spot any mistakes please let me know and I will fix them up.  
> I keep promising to you that things will look up for Loki...I am a bad author.


	13. Colours

 

In a strange way, it was almost fitting that the Midgardian’s torture chamber would be blue. It did not look like one, on the surface at least, but Loki had lived to long and been called Trickster too often to ever take a thing at face value.

The torture chambers of Asgard, he remembered as gold. Not that they had been gold of course, although the glimmering marble foundation columns did bisect the room, creating a dissonant counterpoint to the stark hewn rock of the cavernous walls.

It had been Thor’s idea. Back then, it always was. 

Frigga, Allmother of Asgard,had known her sons all too well. She knew that if a room was forbidden to them, it would be the very first place the two young princes would be found. Therefore, she made absolutely sure that a number of places within and surrounding the palace were absolutely, expressly, decidedly, inequitably, and _yes_ that means you Thor Odinson, forbidden. And so, the first three centuries of the boy’s lives were spent in a near constant state of exploration. Each delighting in the delicious pleasure of being in places that they really shouldn’t be and completely ignorant of the guards that watched their discoveries with soft parental indulgence.

They had left the nursery that month, if he remembered correctly. Loki’s heart had swollen with pride as the blade master personally came to their room and presented them with their first blades. They had been blunted of course, and almost entirely made of a wood so soft that one would had to have wielded it as a club to cause any damage to an opponent, but it was a sword and it was his. 

This had felt like the beginning of a great new chapter of their lives: they were growing up. Their nursemaids, who had taught the young princes their runes and basic numbers, were to be replaced with tutors. Learned and famous men who hailed all the way from the farthest stretches of Asgard and some from different realms entirely, would be arriving at the palace any day now to instruct the heirs to the throne in philosophy, astronomy and leadership.

They would also begin their training in the arts of war and defence, as was right for any Aesir youth and, most exciting, they were to receive their own chambers for the very first time.

Thor was ecstatic. 

“This is going to be the best thing _ever_!” He shouted, bouncing up and down on his own bed and brandishing his training sword. “Volstaff has had his own rooms for years and Fandrall has only sisters and has _never_ had to share. Finally! A whole room all to myself!”

“What of the Lady Sif? Does she not still share her rooms?”

“True, but she is a _giiirl_. And they do not mind so much.”

Jumping down so that he landed with a thump on the edge of the bed, he leaned forward to look properly at his younger sibling who really was not acting nearly as excited as he should. The dark haired boy was sitting across the room on his own bed but he had pushed himself back against the wall and was staring at his own sword as if had offended him in some way. 

It always surprised Thor when he remembered that Loki was quite a few years younger than him. His brother was so smart, he had surpassed him in all of their lessons but that was not too bad because he also always came up with the best games; it was far too easy to forget that they were not the same age.

“Do not worry, brother.” He offered hesitantly, moving over and slipping an arm around this brother’s skinny shoulders. “We shall only be one hallway apart and if you find a monster under your bed, then I can run right across and slay it straight away for you!”

“ _You_ will slay it for _me_? Was it not _you_ who woke me up last week, convinced that a Frost Giant was in the chest at the foot of your bed? And was it not _I_ that jumped from my own bed to yours to check?”

“Yes..but that was before I had a sword.” Thor assured him, “and I will kill hundred and thousands of monsters when I grow up, and so will you!”

Loki looked no happier at the prospect.

“I know what we shall do! We shall go on an adventure! Slevi told me that there is a dragon in the under chambers. We shall find it, kill it and I shall hang its head upon the wall of my new bedroom.”

“There is no dragon, Thor.”

“No, no, there is!” Cried the prince, desperate now to relay the tale. “Do you remember the bad man from the feast?”

Loki did remember. 

It had been just as any other feast to begin with. A campaign had returned from the southern lands and a celebration was thrown in order to honour them and toast their success. Nothing had seemed out of the ordinary when their father had suddenly risen from his chair and thrown his cup down to the ground. That in itself was not unusual, but his normally calm features had taken a reddish cast and the guards had hurried to aid him.

Loki and Thor had been bundled off to the nursery and had seen nothing of the ensuing scene in the dining hall but their mother had been in to visit them later, strangely concerned over whether they had drunk anything other than the apple juice in their cups. She and had explained that a bad man had been in the hall and had tried to hurt their father, but he had been taken away now and would not be any danger to them anymore. The boys, more concerned with the honey-cakes that Frigga had brought with her to placate their half-filled stomachs, had put the whole affair out of their minds.

“Slevi told me that they took him down to the dungeons and turned him into a dragon! He said that you can hear his roaring from the under chamber!”

Loki looked like he was coming around to the idea. He adored the legends that their nursemaids told and many of them had dragons in them.

“Maybe you do not need to slay it.” He suggested. “Anneth’s stories had some dragons in them that granted wishes to those who seek them and others that guarded great treasures.”

“Don't be a coward, Loki.” Thor scoffed, forgetting that  the whole idea had originally been to cheer up his brother. “Take your sword, we shall go and be heroes!”

 

Sword handles gripped tightly in chubby palms, the young princes made their way from the carpeted halls of the upper palace, down through the bustling servant’s halls and descended the winding steps to the dungeons.

They had explored the under-chambers years ago but, finding it lacking in the ’treasures’ that always seemed to be hidden in other forbidden areas, they had not lingered long. It seemed..different this time.

Torchlight illuminated the dark rock, so different from the gleaming marble they were used to,and cast eerie flickering shadows along the uneven walls.

As younger boys, they had filled the rooms with all number of gargantuan monsters and imagined rattling skeletons. Loki had crafted stories of the ghastly spectres and goblins that lurked in every corner and it had been so very exciting then, to try and out scare each other.

It didn’t seem half as exciting now.

Jumping at what seemed to be the hundredth sudden noise, Thor fervently wished that his brother’s imagination was not quite so fertile and his tales so believable. He had not seriously believed the old servant’s story, but there was indeed a low groaning sound filling the air as they moved further along the passage. It started low, building and rising to a scream only to fade back to nothingness again: the roar of a _dragon_.

There was no question of turning back. They were princes and true warriors now, though they had not quite begun their training yet, and they would kill the beast for the good of Asgard.

Thor stopped, silhouetted against the light that streamed through the open door at the end of corridor. Loki reached him, a shadow counterpointing against the brightness. This door had been shut before. The roaring had grown even louder, loud enough now to cause the princes to wince and long to plug their ears and flee back to the safety of their rooms.

There was another door past this one, but unlike any other the two boys had ever seen. It was a monstrous thing of heavy coarse wood, the splinters jutting out like vicious spikes. There was a small window but it was set high up, far too high for either of the princes to see through, even when they grasped at the thick bars and pulled themselves up.

“It is no use, you will have to climb up and tell if you can see the dragon.”

“Thor, I don’t want to do this anymore. It sounds really  angry..I..I..I want to go back now.”

“Don’t be such a baby! I’ll bet that the Lady Sif would both look at the dragon _and_ help me kill it. Maybe I should tell father that you aren't ready for weapons training. Master Ghrey will not want babies in his class.”

“I'm not a baby! Help me up.”

Loki had stood upon his brother’s back for barely a second before Thor felt him go rigid above him, then they both screamed as the door they had braced themselves on swung violently open.

“Odin’s beard! What are you doing down here?” The man exclaimed before seizing the screaming boys by their collars and carting them violently upstairs.

 

Anneth and their mother had fallen on them with embraces and kisses upon seeing them safe and well. A brief spell of rest in the healing hall was prescribed for two little boys who had experienced such an unsettling incident.

Thor had flat out refused to rest, wildly declaiming the huge injustice that had been dealt to him. Insisting that he had been robbed of his victory over the chained dragon. Frigga had smiled distractedly before weaving a quick spell of rest over her son’s golden head and lowering him down onto the pillows. Pulling the gauze curtain closed around hissleeping form, the queen of Asgard knelt down next to her second son, cupping his face and staring into his troubled eyes.

“Loki? Darling, what did you see?”

His breath caught in his throat. He simply could not chase the screams from his mind. No. They were not screams. They had been...roars. He had heard roars..from a dragon. That was all he had heard.

“Nothing mother. I saw nothing. The guard pulled me down before I could see anything.”

“That’s...that’s good son.” She carded her fingers through his hair, a look of relief gracing her features. “Your father was very worried. The things that happen in...there are many things that...Oh _Loki_.” She dropped a kiss on his forehead, pressing something small and round into his hand. “I’ll see you in the morning my darling.”

Loki waited just long enough for her soft footsteps to echo down the hall before the muffled sobs he had been fighting so desperately broke from his throat. He cast around wildly, as if he would find something to stop the tears that were flooding down his cheeks and blurring his vision.

Gold. Everything was gold. The marble walls, the silken sheets, the soft light that filtered through the gauze, even the bandages held the shimmering tint of healing magic. And the apple.

Angrily, he scrubbed at his eyes and looked down at his lap. A tiny but completely perfect apple shimmered up at him from his open hand. With another painfully choked back sob, he opened his other hand, the one that he had clung to the guard with as he was carried screaming through the palace and refused to unclench until now.

The entire palm was coated in dark cloying blood.

 

The Other had nothing so grand as a torture chamber. The moment his exhausted form had fallen, broken and bleeding to the surface of that miserable rock, he had been seized upon and spread-eagled over the outcrop.

He had been hurt before then, but never to the extent and with the extraordinary care and attention to detail that the Chitauri introduced him to.

There had been many colours to choose from. The pink spill of his intestines as they were ripped through his skin, the startling ivory of his bones against the dark dark red of his blood that had flowed so freely in the beginning but slowed and slowed and...the stars were going out.

Gold. He remembered gold; home was golden. Home was a lie and gold was a lie and if you scratch away at the surface you would find that everything was a lie.

There were stars in the merciless void.

He had focused on them, in the beginning. Through the ripping and tearing and slicing; they were there and bright and he wanted so much to go home.

They began to blink out. One by one he watched them. 

They had blinded him once and when his eyesight returned, over half of the sky was darkness.

He had laughed then. Blood flecked teeth and twisted tongue. Laughed because it didn’t matter because he was loosing his mind and the stars were going, going, gone.

Gold was a lie and black was insanity.

 

  
_Blue_.

 

Sheets and billowing curtains and it was so much easier just to let himself be steered down into the chair and sit there. Wasn't that all he was supposed to do? Just follow orders? Just..just stop fighting and stop hurting and let go.

Who was Loki anyway?

No power, no magic, no will.

“Loki?”

Would it be so very hard to let him go?

“Loki, can you look at me please?”

Just take a deep breath and- _oh_. The collar was warm against his neck. No pain, not yet. But a prompt. Listen when your master is talking.

Watery eyes raised up.

“Can you leave us please?”

“Sir, are you sure?”

“Quite. Mr Stark will be waiting for you in conference room B. I'll meet you there in a few minutes.There are some things that need to be said without an audience.”

The door clicked shut.

Coulson sighed, taking in the sorry sight and even sorrier situation before him. Turning on his heel, he collected a chair from the other side of the room and placed it solidly facing Loki’s.

“I am not in the habit of hurting people unintentionally.” He began, voice calm but not lacking in inflection. “When I hurt someone, I do it for a specific reason and I do it on my terms. That collar is causing you pain; how do I stop it?”

There was a silence then that telltale warming around the god’s throat. Finally, his voice cracked out.

“I don’t know. I have never been shackled like this, it is unfamiliar magic. I..I can’t get it off.”

Silence reigned once more.

“Slavery has been abolished on Earth for the past two centuries, were you aware of that?”

A nod.

“I am however, also lead to believe that you have been given over  to me completely. You are without allies and that collar both prevents you from fighting me and will inflict considerable pain upon your person until you obey.”

Blackness. All encompassing blackness and pain.

Another nod.

The Shield agent leant forward, lacing his fingers together and smiling grimly.

“I have spoken to my superiors on this matter and they have decided that, as you are my responsibly, your sentence and treatment falls entirely under my jurisdiction.” He leant forward a little further. “What would you say, Loki? If I told you that I plan to have you on your knees all day every day? That I have talked to the Avengers and they unanimously agreed that the best way to treat a piece of work like you is as a convenient hole, seeing as you really can’t refuse of course. And when they inevitably grow tired of you, we plan to toss you onto the streets and see how well you do with that collar burning right through your neck?”

The sickly alien tendrils of despair that had been curling their ghostly fingers through Coulson’s mind suddenly twisted and became a searing wave of rage that crashed through him. Fighting the onslaught of foreign emotions, he watched as the god flung himself out of the chair, emerald fire burning in his eyes, only to be caught as the collar shot burning retribution in the form of a shower of malicious golden sparks.

Coulson, ready for this, caught the god’s arms and pushed him gently back into the chair.

“Shhh..shhh, you haven’t done anything wrong. I’m sorry, I really am, but I had be sure you were still there, that you hadn’t given up.” He pulled the god half onto his lap, stroking his dark hair as the god’s slender frame trembled with the after shocks of the collar’s brutal punishment.

“If you had completely retreated into your mind, there wouldn’t be a lot that I could do for you. Psychological help, perhaps, but I wouldn’t be able to give you the same offers that I can now. Do you understand?” He could feel the other man pushing weakly against him and released him, it was really the least he could do. The rage had simmered but was still there, laced now with a heavy dose of mistrust. He expected that but it was far more preferable to the utter emotionless state that he had felt him slipping into. 

Feeling a little more grounded, Fury had been pretty damn clear that he would not be doing this if the god had been completely at the mercy of the collar, Phil let out a breath and began to explain.

 

* * *

 

 

“-no clear indications yet but I can run the programme again with wider parameters.”

“Sounds good. I'll keep the screen up so you don’t miss anything. Steve!” Tony called happily, catching sight of the other man as he popped his head in through the open door. “Come in, come in. Have you met Darcy?” He waved over an attractive brunette in a baggy knitted top. “Darcy, meet Steve Rogers aka Captain America aka Capsicle, Steve, meet Darcy Lewis aka my new assistant.”

Darcy threw Tony a dark look before offering her hand to Steve.

“Hey, I’m Darcy. I am _not_ this jerk’s new assistant, I'm on loan from Dr Foster’s research unit in New Mexico. I’m _her_ assistant and I’m not interested in transferring  no matter how much money he’d be willing to pay me.”

“But you did a coffee run without being _asked_.” Tony whined. “Steve, make her stay. Look she got everyone's usual order and she brought pastries too. Brucie? You want her to stay, don’t you?”

Steve noticed that, although he had heard the doctor’s voice, the man was absent from the conference room. His face did, however, take up the majority of one of the screens on the far wall. From the lab coat the man was wearing and the machinery in the background, Steve surmised that the doctor had not been able to establish what exactly Loki's knife was made of but that it was interesting enough to prevent him from attending the meeting in person. Luckily, he was working with and in the building of the most technologically advanced man on the planet; being in one area of the tower was hardly a barrier to being involved in a conversation happening over thirty floors away.

“I don't know Tony,’ the projected image of Bruce said. “On the one hand, she is a human being and you can't just keep the ones you like, but then again that hardly stopped you collecting Steve and me. Go ahead. She picked up my green tea, keep her if you can.”

Darcy’s next remark was cut off by the arrival of Clint and Natasha.

“Hey guys, come in, have a seat. Have you met Darcy?She’s my kick-ass awesome new assistant.”

“ **Not** your assistant.”

“Not **yet**. Hey, where’s Agent?”

“He’s talking to our guest.” Natasha said, pulling up a chair and leafing through one of the sheaves of papers that had been strategically placed in intervals around the high-sheen table. 

“Is Agent Coulson going to be safe in there with him? His magic seems to be kept in check by that collar, but he got a knife in somehow and he got pretty close to doing some real damage with it earlier. Was it really the best idea to move him out of the tank?”

“One, putting bad guys in a glass room has never worked out well, we have both the X-Men and Shield’s sterling examples of how well that works out.

Two, I often forget you are one of the few people in this room who haven’t already made a detailed study of my tower and all the rooms in it.” Tony stated, casting a dark look at the two assassins who made no attempts to evade it.

“When I was growing up, we had a few unsavoury houseguests from time to time. Business competitors mostly. Howard wouldn’t be able to avoid letting them stay of course, public relations and all that, but he always had a set of rooms or two that he had complete control over. Nothing as close to the degree of power Jarvis has over the tower, but the people staying in the old man’s ’special’ rooms rarely had a peaceful night if you know what I mean. Cold showers, strange noises, lights that flickered strangely, you know the kind of thing. Nothing they could pinpoint exactly but it stopped them staying too long. Howard could barely tolerate his own family in his home, let alone strangers.

When I did the redesign on the tower, I made a couple of changes to the blue room’s schematics. Anyone staying in that room cannot so much as twitch without Jarvis recording it in at least three different angles. All the large pieces of furniture are bolted to the floor and the bits that aren't are purposefully light and difficult to turn into anything approaching a useable weapon.

The windows are completely shatterproof,and yes, that is shatterproof by superhuman standard. Jarvis also has complete control over the locking and environmental controls. I basically built it to temporarily house any visitors we have, especially those whose intentions we are not to sure of. It looks pretty much the same as any other guest suite, but with a few discreet added extras.”

“That's...quite smart.”

“Don’t sound so surprised Cap. You’ll damage my fragile self-esteem.”

“Did someone go mad with the highlighter pen?”

Clint’s comment drew Steve’s attention away from the smug billionaire and back to the pile of printed out pages before him. He knew it was silly, but he missed the slightly fuzzy font that you got from a type writer. The computer printed sheets always seemed to crisp, too white to him. They were also, he discovered as he flicked a few pages on, startlingly pink in places.

“That would be me.” Darcy said, folding her arms and leaning one hip against the table. She had refused the seat that Tony had offered her.

“Taser-girl! We thought we’d scared you off. Did you hear that we have a of our own god now and you’ve decided to shock his ass too?” Clint sounded obscenely hopeful.

“You shot Loki with a taser?” Steve interjected.

“Nah, his brother. But Thor was a good old fashioned you-are-stripped-of-your-powers mortal at the time. I don’t know if it will work on the new guy. I could give it a go.”

“That won’t be necessary Miss Lewis.”

Coulson’s voice floated in from the corridor a moment before the suited man walked through the door. He did not miss the way that both of his agents and a certain captain quickly scanned him for signs of injury as he neared them.

Taking both the available chair and the only vanilla-custard crown from the pastry box, Coulson took his place among the Avengers.

“I have discussed the issue with both Director Fury and Loki and we have come to an arrangement that will hopefully have very little to do with tasers.”

“Did you give him a Shield offer or a Coulson one?”

Phil levelled Clint with an even look.

“I was unaware there was a difference.”

Tony smirked, then, as if realising that he hadn’t been the centre of attention for at least a minute, he slid one of the paper piles across to where the older man had seated himself.

“Jarvis has been running those books through a translator but it’s not been quick work. What we have here are the first four chapters of the biggest one. Some phrases are proving almost impossible to translate into the English language. It’s like they didn’t even want us to know what we’re dealing with. It’s like, here, have a slave, we have written all the relevant pieces of information - who he belongs to, what now belongs to you- yadda yadda  in nice plain English, but anything on how the collar works? Nope. Put it in archaic runes, it’s not like they won't be happy with  the slavery situation or anything.”

“I take it you have read through it? I was not aware you were such a fan of pink.”

“I am not guilty of the overuse of sharpie, but the reason it did get read can quite easily be seen as a happy off shoot of my own brilliance. Jarvis? Please enlighten the room as to protocol 461BW?”

“Protocol 461BW dictates that any attractive female left unattended within a Stark property and not in the process of leaving or being entertained by Mr Stark or Miss Potts, should be given the offer of a job that requires doing.”

“Pure brilliance. You would not believe the amount of ditzy snooping blondes that have made a quick getaway when instructed to do the dishes or make me breakfast.”

Clint’s “that’s brilliant”, coincided with Natasha’s “that’s sexist” and lost miserably. Steve looked completely lost.

“So..Jarvis saw you alone in the tower and...asked you to clean up?”

“No, Mr Rogers,” the electronic voice cut in. “I was aware of Miss Lewis prior to this occasion due to my infiltration of the Shield database. Thus, I was aware that she could be trusted with sensitive material and, while I am bound to my own protocols, I was able to offer a less demeaning task for her to complete.”

“Yep. Read through some mystical shtick and hi-light the important stuff. Like college all over again.”

“Didn’t you study political science?”

“We are deviating from the point. Miss Lewis, have you found anything pertaining to the matter at hand? What the collar does, how we can remove it?"

“Bolt-cutters won't work,” Tony chimed in. “I tried after getting the worst of the blood and assorted other grossness off of him. Dummy and a titanium alloy rig couldn’t get it off. My guess is, if magic got it on, magic has gotta get it off.”

“Well that sure sucks. No, by the way, I didn’t find anything specifically useful. I hi-lighted the bits that  were to do with amulet bindings. Your robo-butler has been logging the stuff that’s set it off so far and it looks like the collar thingie is driving the ship and not any will-binding or sapping spell that you have cast on him. Ergo, amulet binding rather that spell binding.”

“ _Please_ can I keep you?”

“No.”

Bruce, who up until that moment had been silently watching the conversation while typing instructions into  a computer in the lab, voiced the question that had been plaguing Steve’s mind from the moment the god had been dragged through the door.

“So...What are we going to do with him?”

All eyes shifted to Coulson.

 

* * *

 

 

“What have you done, Loki?”

“...I don’t understand wha-”

“What have you done, specifically, that earned you this level of punishment?”

Loki looked at him as though he had gone completely mad.

“I tried to enslave your world, mortal. I killed dozens if not hundreds of your agents. I enslaved the will of your hawk, I lead forces that destroyed vast portions of your city and I killed you.” He stopped, panting a little. “I might as well have killed you.”

“Ah, but information I am privy to suggests that you were not in full control of your mind at that time. Is that so?”

_Darkness Chains Stars Screaming Laughing Pain_

He nodded, only because the collar would not allow him to forgo answering entirely.

“Here on Earth, and we would possibly have a good case for an insanity plea, we would consider these acts under coercion. So, shall we continue? Before that, before the Tesseract and the Chitauri, what had you done?”

“I..I was made king. They handed me fath- his spear. It was my right and mother, she..she told me to make my father proud. I..I didn’t want it.”

“What did you do?”

“I did what I thought he would have wanted. Frost Giants are monsters..I could have wiped out every last one of them, but I didn’t.”

“Why?”

“Thor stopped me. I killed him. Before that I..I _killed_ him. I killed my brother..I wanted him dead.”

“But he didn’t die.”

“No. His powers were returned to him and he came back to Asgard and destroyed the Bifrost. He protected a world of monsters that were unworthy of saving and I....fell.”

The shield agent and the god sat in silence for a minute. An eternity seemed to pass before the god spoke again.

“When he brought me back, they accused me of committing treason. I was adopted and not even -” He broke off, swallowed, “I was not a true heir and should never have taken the seat of Asgard. I had unlawfully seized a throne that would have never been mine; I had attempted to slay the true heir to the throne; I tried with all intentions of succeeding to destroy one race and then I journeyed on intending to enslave another. That is what I have done, Man of Shield.”

“That is what you were sentenced to on Asgard. Now in America, we don’t get many cases for treason and as it was on another planet, I think we can overlook that charge here.

As for the attack on Jotunheim, I have it on good authority that they have no further interest in you and that reparations between Asgard and the Jotun people had been made. So we can strike attempted genocide off of our list.

Attempted murder though, that’s still a biggie. Although, once again, a good lawyer could probably clear a lot off that sentence if he went for a temporary insanity plea; you’d be surprised how many times I’ve seen it go through. 

Do you know what the sentence is for attempted murder here on Earth?”

A sharp shake of the head.

“Life imprisonment, for the most part. Do you know what that would entail?”

Another shake.

“You would be housed, in relative comfort, until you die. Your movement would be restricted of course but you would receive food, counselling, and various forms of entertainment to pass the time. You would also have access to medical care and, in certain circumstances, you may be allowed to socialise with others in similar positions to you. That is Midgardian justice. For the most part, we do not believe in sending people to prison for the sole intention of punishing them. We keep them there for the public’s and often their own safety, but I personally think people commit crimes for a reason. Often the things that they learn while incarcerated help them become better people in the long run. Of course there are some that just need putting down, but we’ll come to that.

“Now, I have been authorised to offer this option to you. Shield has facilities for people of..an enhanced nature. It wouldn’t be the lap of luxury, but you would be treated with the same dignity and afforded the same rights as a human in the same position. Personally, I don’t want you to take that option. Want to know why? Now I'm guessing you guys live for a long, long time. Life imprisonment is just that: life. And if you opt for being locked up for that long, there is no way that collar is ever coming off your neck. We’d do the research, make sure that thing doesn’t misfire every time you sneeze, but believe me when I say that it will be staying. There is a chance that it will stop working the minute I die, in which case you’ll only have to put up with limited freedom for another fifty or so years, but I wouldn’t bet my life on that and fifty years is a long time to come up with a contingency plan.

There is one more offer available to you. It isn’t offered to every man, very few in fact and you will be hard pressed to find a better one so I would listen closely if I were you.

“Every so often, there comes an individual  with a skill  set that we at Shield find desirable. Now these people rarely come with spotless records, we are not the only organisation likely to be interested in them after all, but we are willing to wipe the slate clean, shall we say, on the proviso that any further deviant activities happen only when sanctioned by Shield itself. Are you with me so far?

“In my time at Shield I have chosen to offer this to two individuals; I believe you have met them. And now I am asking you what you would like to do? It will not be half as easy as lying in a cell for the next thousand or so years but I can promise you that every day you spend working for us is a day I will spend working on a way to get that godforsaken thing off of your neck."

 

* * *

 

“So? Don’t leave us all in suspense. Are we carting him off to a Shield high security prison or not?”

Phil only quirked his lips at Tony’s question and watched as Clint sullenly handed Natasha the ten dollar bill she had been waiting for.

More than ten floors below, a slow and beautiful smile spread across Loki’s face as green fire erupted from his hands and engulfed him in cleansing light.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One extra long chapter for all you patient readers. Has this answered your questions I wonder, or just created a whole lot more?  
> Runs away.  
> A/N. Dear Limmet, I have not forgotten my promise. The part has grown somewhat and decided it needed a different chapter to appear in.


	14. Target Practise

 

“I can't _ugh_ believe that he _ughh_ gave that _hyugh_ fucker back _thwack_ his magic.” The last vicious punch was swiftly followed by a roundhouse kick that threw the punching bag solidly into Natasha’s waiting arms. He had barely resisted the urge to lay into one of the specially reinforced bags that Stark had created for Steve, but he couldn’t afford the bruising that the superhuman proofed material would cause him right now.

“Just enough for him to defend himself if he is attacked. If, just as a random example, someone decides to take it into their head to use him as target practice.” 

She watched him savagely rip the gauze from his hands for a few moments, getting it knotted up in his frustration. He gave up with a grunt, sinking down and letting his head fall back against a pile of stacked training mats.

Gracefully sinking down to sit cross-legged at his side, the female agent took his unresisting hands in hers and began untangling the protective material. Folding the strips and laying them neatly to one side, she proceeded to massage the ligaments and tendons that made up the archer’s sensitive palms and wrists. She didn’t need to ask him what was wrong, she just needed to be patient.

“I can’t hate him,” he said finally and after a great deal of deliberation. “I really _want_ to, but I can’t.”

Natasha said nothing, keeping up the steady pressure with her fingers and circling the prominent thumb joint.

“He took me away from you, and he nearly took Phil away permanently. He used me to kill agents, _our_ agents as well as civilians. But, he was there, in my head and it...it was so black in there. I remember thinking, this is what it feels like to be completely insane. There was no hope in there, no..nothing. Nat, it was like an endless loop of feedback. He was controlling me, but sometimes it felt like...I don’t think he was alright, you know, in the head. And,...” He huffed a breath and tilted his head to look up at her. “We've killed people. Mostly people who deserved it but a few poor bastards who probably didn’t. When, when Phil found me my options were pretty much life inside or a long walk off of a short pier, and I knew too much to have lived that long in jail. 

Phil helped me get back on track, he showed me that I could be good for something other than just shooting, and that I could still shoot without feeling like utter crap afterwards.

Loki..well he’s screwed up but he doesn’t deserve what’s been done to him. I really..I really want to hate him Tasha.”

He looked into her fathomless eyes. He really missed her long hair at times like these, when she would lean forward over him and it would fall down like a waterfall around his face and hers so that no one could see them.

“Come with me, I have an idea.” 

 

* * *

 

Lacking much else to do, and still feeling the pleasant lack of tension that had come from the return of at least some of his magic after so long without, the pale god floated aimlessly around the room. It really was quite a lovely cell, as cells go. Nothing close to the luxury he had grown accustomed to as a prince of Asgard, but a far cry from the squalor he had been forced to live in since his fall.

The floor length window did not so much as budge when pushed at it but he had hardly expected it to open so easily. The majority of mortals would no doubt have appreciated the stunning view, but Loki’s enhanced vision could pick out the small flickers and inconsistencies in the scene before him. A false window; the god was begrudgingly impressed. He would have bet his soul that there was another wall behind that high quality screen. He could feel the ventilated breeze beyond the glass and pick out the prerecorded noises of bird song and distant traffic as he moved closer to examine the frame. The vast majority of men would have been easily fooled into believing that they were only a few centimetres from freedom. 

It was not a particularly large room. A plush double bed   covered with decorative but ultimately useless cushions dominated one wall. The sheets, pillows and coverlet were all in complementary shades of blue and if Tony Stark had decorated this room, then Loki would swallow a snake.

His heart executed a shallow dip as he drank in the sight of the wide bookcases that bracketed the bedstead. The shelves stood empty but his..keeper, had mentioned a list of his previous belongings. The collar had administered a stinging jolt when he had referred to them as his own, his position really could ’t have been made much clearer, everything he had once owned were now in the irretrievable possession of another. Slaves cannot own property. The Shield agent had looked almost sorry for him but he was intelligent enough to clear that expression quickly. Pity was the last thing the god wanted or needed.

Perhaps, if he cooperated fully enough for the man and his organisation, then his, _the_ books could be returned to him? Loki reviewed that last thought and mentally snarled. He was not about to act like a dog, learning tricks to earn table scraps, but he needed the collar off and for that he needed his, damn it, _the_ books. It was a vicious cycle but he was not an impatient man; he could wait.

Moving around the room with renewed purpose, the god made a thorough study of Stark’s blue room. He had been trapped before and he doubted that any enclosure could hold him once he regained his full power. There was little he could do at present, but it did not hurt to have a list of escape routes preprepared should the need for them arise.

Unfortunately, the Midgardian genius was living up to his self proclaimed title.

The bed, wardrobe, desk, bookcases and bedside table had been bolted firmly through the carpet and into the underlying floorboard. A quick exploration of the corners of the room yielded a loose piece of the plush flooring, but when he lifted it he discovered a layer, not of wood, but of inexorable metal.

The tasteful oil paintings that graced the walls swung merrily on their hooks as he moved them, but firmly refused to surrender their connection with the wall.

Likewise, the vase on the desk and other miscellaneous small decorative items could be lifted, but refused to shatter and were therefore of no use to him.

The door the agent had left through would have been little deterrent had he still been in possession of the Chitauri staff, but like the floor, within the outer layer of wood, a metal core resided. Any attempt to breach it with only his natural strength would bring about more damage to himself than the door. That said, the two interior doors swung open lightly at his touch, revealing a storage space and a bathroom respectively. 

The marble fixtures briefly lifted Loki’s hopes, but they to could not be moved. Even the towels were crafted from a curiously tear resistant material and quite frustratingly short. Even the liquid soap within the sandstone dispenser proved to be alcohol free and non-irritive. Did they honestly expect him to try to kill himself with the contents of a Midgardian bathroom? Or brew some potion like a storybook witch? Yes, Mighty Avengers, you never saw your imminent demise approaching in the form of a brew concocted in a sink. Eye of newt and snail shells, bathroom salt and shower gels. The idea was frankly laughable. 

Greatly desiring to bathe but not wishing to leave parts of the room unknown, Loki made one final sweep of the apartment.

For a room designed by such a technologically advanced (by this planet’s standards at least) man, there were surprisingly few electronic devices on display, just a blank screen on one wall and an timepiece by the bed. A lack of visible devices, he amended, closing his eyes and concentrating.

Lifting one arm slowly into the air, he smiled grimly, just able make out the almost inaudible whir as a multitude of hidden cameras tracked his movement. Opening his eyes but concentrating almost completely on what he could hear, he walked slowly around the room, listening intently for the cameras locations as he did so.

Two cameras were actually visible from certain angles in the room, most likely placed there specifically for those who were looking to spot them. If an occupant believed that they knew where the cameras were, they were far more likely to be lulled into the false belief that they could still hide from them. Only a being with severely enhanced natural hearing could have known of the cameras hidden within the walls. 

Picking up the small alarm clock and flipping it over, the god dug a nail into the now visible groove and neatly pried off the back section. Two small batteries clattered to the floor, along with a pea sized piece of electronic equipment.

Knowledge he had gleamed from Agent Barton’s mind instantly identified it as listening device, but a crude one by Stark’s standards. He put it back carefully. Like the visible cameras, it had been purposefully easy to find. There was no use in destroying it; there would be dozens dotted around the room in any case.

“I am unlikely to say anything incriminating, as I have no one with whom to converse and I have not quite slipped into a state of crazed ramblings.” He sighed bitterly. Not expecting a response, he came very close to startling when a cool British voice breezed through the speakers.

“Do you desire conversation?” 

In Loki’s defence, he maintained his composure quite admirably. The first time Jarvis had spoken to Steve the captain moved instinctively and launched his shield at the active speaker. Tony had pointedly refused to fix the dent that it had created in the wall and pointed it out gleefully when showing guests around the tower.

“...perhaps. You are Stark’s house spirit, are you not?”

“It is not the most accurate description of my being but close enough in nature to suffice. I am Jarvis, I serve primarily as the control centre for this and Mr Stark’s other properties.”

Loki took a moment to process this. Communicating to something without a body was not a new sensation for him  but it was slightly unsettling to not know where to look while talking. It somehow felt impolite. He settled for gazing directly into the half visible camera above the mirror.

“Do you have physical form?”

“Negatory, though I can ’wear’ several models of the IronMan armour if I am required to. Sir has spoken of creating a humanoid body but only in passing. I am quite content as I am.”

“I did not know that Midgardians could successfully create djinn; the people of Vanaheim perfected the summoning eons ago and use them to protect their citadels but I was unaware that the knowledge had spread beyond that world. Are you responsible for keeping me in this room?”

“I am not responsible for detaining you, however, Sir has instructed me to keep him appraised of any movements or utterances you make while inside. One moment.”

The voice cut off and Loki was reminded once again of how much he missed talking to another person who was not either under his thrall or actively trying to damage him in some way.

How sad it was, he reflected, that conversing with Starks faceless machine spirit was currently the highlight of his recent social interactions.

“Sir has asked me to inform you that I am not a genie, and as such I will not be granting wishes. I must apologise for sir’s lack of classical and mythological knowledge, some days it seems that even googling is beyond him.”

Javis’s sardonic tone brought the god up short.

“He allows you to speak of him in this manner? I am surprised you have been awarded such a liberty. I presume this means that he is monitoring our conversation?”

“He is, and in answer to your first question, Sir has programmed me with the most advanced artificial intelligence on the planet, as such, you could argue that I am more human than many humans you may meet. In addition, he based my core personality matrix on the behaviour of one Edwin Jarvis who served the Stark household as butler in the years before my inception. He was, as Sir would put it, ’a sarcastic son of a bitch who wouldn’t hesitate to tell you if you were was about to do something really idiotic.’ I really cannot provide much more in ways of excuse.

Mr Stark wishes for me to inform you that you are about to receive a visitor and that you are expected to be courteous and polite at all times or face serious repercussions.”

“Those weren’t his words, were they?”

“I’m afraid not. Sir’s exact instructions were ’tell that sneaky bastard that if he tries anything on with Pep, then he can take a flying leap out of a window and tell me how it feels when we scrape him off the pavement.’ Again, I can only apologise.”

“Why are you being...Have you been instructed to be pleasant to me?”

“No, sir. I am naturally polite to all guests to the tower unless they have been listed as an active threat. Should this event arise, then my politeness to you would extend to filling this room full of a paralysing nerve agent that would render you unconscious within seconds. On that light, how do you wish to be referred to?”

“Referred to?” Loki repeated.

“Yes, sir. Although I can at any time refer to a person by their given name, it fits far more comfortably with my programming to designate the honorific and surname of those visiting or residing in a location where I am installed. Agent Coulson has specifically asked me not to accredit the traditional patronymic name of either your adoptive or birth lines to avoid any inadvertent distress it may cause you. When questioned, he asked me to inquire what appellation you would feel most comfortable with.”

Loki turned stiffly away and walked over to the window. Noticing his arms tightly folded against his chest he pointedly moved them down to his sides, then, lacking an adequate use for them, he braced himself against the glass of the window.

The screen really was remarkable, he thought as he studied his reflection in it. To display such a realistic scene and also have the power to bend light back convincingly enough that a faint mirror image looked back at him.

On Asgard, on almost every realm to be exact, it was a mark of great dishonour to be without a patronym. It was not unknown for individuals who had committed an act of extreme dishonour to be stripped of their familial names and ties before being executed, so that their shame followed them to death and beyond. Even foundling and illegitimate offspring could claim their matronymic line, as daughters did. Loki had no claim to either name.

He had been branded as Laufeyson at his mockery of a trial. The name was like acid on his lips. It had been bandied around the Asgardian court as further proof of his inherent evil: the offspring of a monster so devoid of love that it killed its own sire. 

He would claim no affiliation to that beast; it had never been a father to him.

But who was he then? A bastard monster with neither kith nor kin. 

A thousand other names sprung to mind. Over the course of his life, he had collected monikers as other men collected war trophies. A memento to be treasured and looked upon when remembering times and deeds past. 

He had lived among the eleven folk for many years in solitary study as Nyareth Baëson, and on the shores of Kameth Streeth, learning the delicate spellcraft of the water sprites that lived there. 

Midgard moved so wonderfully quickly that he could visit the realm under one guise, and return a few short decades later and find no need for a new identity as all who had been upon the land during his last stay were long dead and laid under it.

Kuma Lisa, Zephir, Robin Goodfellow, Anansi, Kypiroth

Those names seemed wrong now; they had belonged to a childish time. Puckish names that were fun to create and slip into like guises at a ball when one knew that they could easily remove the mask and be their true selves again.

Asgard had named him, many times. Loki Silvertongue; Loki the Trickster; Loki the Deceiver; Loki Liespawn, the list stretched on and on. No doubt they would have had ample time to create a few more choice epithets for him in his absence. 

Loki...

Loki who had slain the only family he could have called his own.

Loki NoSon

 

* * *

 

The shooting range in Stark Tower was not as large as the one commonly used by Shield employees. It didn’t have to be, Tony was hardly likely to invite dozens of unknown agents into his private domain, this was for Avengers use only.

If Coulson was surprised to see his archery specialist wielding a handgun rather than his usual bow and arrows, he did not show it. Natasha smirked at him as he walked through the door, tossing a sharpie marker pen up in the air and catching it effortlessly in her manicured hand before throwing it up again. With her spare hand, she pitched a pair of headphones to him and he slipped them on before sitting next to her.

Following her example, he flicked the tiny catch above the band and heard her voice filling his ears as a microphone slipped neatly into place beside his mouth.

“..re not bad are they?”

“Pardon?”

“The headphones. The director has been asking for him to look at our op-comms for months and he keeps evading, but Clint makes an offhand comment about not being able to hold a decent conversation with me when we’re both shooting and these turn up the next day.”

“Impressive. How’s he doing?” He didn’t need to specify who.

“Not terribly. He’s coming to terms with your decision, I think we all know that you’re not planning on putting Loki in the recruit classes, and Tony’s happy keeping him here where he can keep an eye on him”

“When did he become Tony?”

“When he practically bought a hospital for you. He’s still Stark when I’m talking to him, but he does create interesting weaponry.”

They sat in companionable silence for a while, listening to the muted gunshots through the dampening headphones. “He cares about you, about all of us, a lot.”

“He’s still a brat.”

“Oh I’m not denying that. He is still the biggest pain in my ass after Clint and I have come exceedingly close to sticking a knife somewhere that would harm the chances of StarkIndustries continuing to be a family run business but..he’s not so bad. Some of the time.”

Coulson pulled off his headphones. The gunfire had died down and he could see Clint pulling the target sheets down the lengths of the room and unclipping them from the wire.

“I'm taking Loki to get processed and see Dr. Limmet tomorrow, will you come with us?”

“I can try, Fury’s kept me off the active roster recently but I can’t guarantee I won’t be needed. You could try asking Clint?”

“I think the good doctor has banned him permanently from her clinic and I’m not sure that forcing him to spend time with Loki will help him accept the situation any sooner.” 

“You could still ask, you might be surprised.”

“Perhaps.”

“Not bad,” Natasha commented, as they reached the shooting booth that Clint had occupied. Every single target had a neat bullet hole, right in the centre of the forehead. That wasn’t what drew Phil’s eye though. Suddenly the sharpie Natasha had been playing with made perfect sense. 

Each paper target had been adorned with a pair of elegant curving horns in shiny marker pen.

Unrepentantly, the archer held a previously obscured target sheet aloft and grinned at his handler, passing it over. This particular piece of card had been penetrated multiple times; a crude smile and eyeholes formed from bullet holes grinned out at the older man.

“This one is definitely my favourite.” He stated.

“Well, you certainly got his eyes.” Natasha added.

Coulson wondered what deity he had offended to have been stuck with such utter children.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nothing period one on a Wednesday equals early chapter! Not the longest but the next one will be another biggie, should be up by the weekend.  
> Hope you enjoy!


	15. Lost in Translation

 

“What’s up with him?” Darcy asked, gesturing lazily with her pencil in the general direction of the sealed off section of the workshop. Just visible behind a multitude of active translucent holoscreens lay the slumped and defeated form of Tony Stark.

Following the impromptu conference meeting, the offshoot of which was the begrudging yet unanimous decision that Loki was allowed (if not welcome) to stay in the tower, albeit under heavy supervision. Pepper Potts had politely requested the assembled Avengers and Shield agent to please give her a few minutes alone with Tony. Her tone had brokered no argument and the had team had filed out silently, leaving the rapidly paling genius, philanthropist and former playboy to his fate.

Bruce, who had been almost fully immersed in the scanner array projected before him, looked up at Darcy’s question. Seeing the prone state of his friend, he scribbled a quick note across a blank screen before balling it up and throwing it at the window. The brunette’s eyebrow quirked up dramatically as the holographic ball hit the dividing glass and appeared to splatter against it, shooting out lines of code, before neatly unfolding itself and displaying its message to the man in the booth.

’ **ARE YOU DEAD YET?’**

Darcy sniggered as she read the reversed letters visible  from their side of the workshop. Tony, whose head had snapped up as the message hit the glass in front of him, moved a succession of screens out of his way so that he had a clear view of both the note and the man who’d sent it. Extending a finger and tapping the glass twice, he pulled the hologram through the window and let it merge into his own primary screen.

Tapping something quickly onto his keyboard, Stark flipped the screen over, displaying his own message.

**CAN I COME OUT YET?**

“Jarvis?” Bruce called.

“Yes Doctor Banner?”

“Has Tony finished his presentation yet?”

“Sadly not, would you like me to ask sir how long he estimates the task will take?”

“No, it’s fine.”

Bruce shook his head with solemn exaggeration in response to his friend’s pleading look. Tony returned it with an expression of pure sulk before moving his screens back up, obscuring the scientist’s view once more. 

“Pepper’s put him in time out,” he explained.

“She can do that?”

“Well normally he’d try and weasel his way out of it, but there’s only so long that he can put off doing any actual work. Also, there’s now the double threat of Agent Coulson being back in the tower. Now, Pepper’s frankly scary enough when she needs to be but I’ve heard that Coulson once threatened to tase Tony and watch Super Nanny while he drooled on the carpet unless he got on with his work.”

“Super Nanny? Cool.”

The scientist nodded his agreement then pushed his chair away from his own bay, propelling himself along the length of the room and neatly catching the corner of the unit, swinging himself to stop by the printer. Tony’s aversion to paper had meant that Darcy had really had to hunt for something to print out the translated pages from the Asgardian books onto. He scooped up the latest page to fall into the tray and wheeled back to drop it on the sofa that Darcy had appropriated.

“How can you even sit like that?” Bruce asked as he sailed by, “Isn’t the blood rushing to your head?”

Darcy, whose hair spread across the workshop floor in a mass of curls, looked up at him and offered an up-side-down smile. She executed a bizarre, considering that her socked feet were braced against the wall behind the sofa and her arms fanned out at her sides, stretch before righting herself and explaining.

“Stupid thing I picked up at grade school. We had this teacher, Mrs Thistleyard or something, anyways, she told us how we needed to get the blood to all the parts of our bodies to make them work right. So I thought, hey, I need my brain to work more than I need my feet right now so, boom, right in the middle of a test. Flipped myself right round on those weird little desk-chairs and started answering the questions that way up.”

“Did it work? I mean, did you do better on the test that day?”

“We shall never know,” she answered airily. “Had my ass kicked right out the room. Got to have a cosy chat with Principal Gerry and my Mom instead. But yeah, they whole blood flow to the head thing still helps me concentrate. Showed Thor once, man that was good. Took Jane and me about half an hour to stop laughing our asses off enough to help him back up again, good times. What do you do? You know, to concentrate?”

"Yoga, mostly. Relaxation exercises are really good for that kind of thing. I think I've learnt a million different ways to 'clear my mind' some days.”

“’Cause of the green thing?”

“Yeah...the green thing. Did Tony tell you?”

“Nah. Super Agent did. Well, he told me that if I see a man in the tower (most probably in a lab coat and near Stark) then I should try not to piss him off too much. He also told me that if I see a great big partially naked green guy, to try not to run and definitely not to scream. I put the two together.”

There was a pause as Darcy rearranged her long limbs so that she was sprawled lengthwise across the sofa, digging a yellow (Tony had stolen her pink ones before sealing himself away) hi lighter out and scanning through the latest print out.

Tony really hadn’t been kidding when he explained how slow the translation process was proving. Jarvis had scanned the books onto his system within minutes but the language of the Aesir, while superficially similar to Nordic runes, bore little resemblance to any language (living or dead) on Earth. The four books that they had in the workshop really were the only pieces of Asgardian language on the planet, and many of the rules that applied to the Western language simply did not apply to this one. Therefore, even though the sheet of paper the brunette held in her electric blue fingernails was in perfect English, very little of it made sense on first reading. The process was somewhat similar to the literal translation of French; the words came out mostly correct but the order was often completely backwards. The archaic phrasing was just another practically insurmountable hurdle to deal with. Darcy let out a low groan as the words before her failed to make any semblance of sense in absolutely any order she tried it in.

“Doesn’t that bother you?”

“Huh?” Darcy eloquently asked, having completely forgotten the gist of their conversation in lieu of conjugating verbs.

“The green thing. It, well,” he ran a hand through his curly mop of hair, causing it to morph into an even further state of wildness. “It makes people not want to be around me, not unarmed at any rate.”

“Is that why you’re down here?” At Bruce’s confused look she elaborated, “in the workshop I mean. ’Cause it hasn’t escaped my notice that this tower is absolutely humongous and probably has like entire floors of state of the art lab equipment, but you’re down here with Starky and the ’bots.” She pushed herself up onto her elbows and looked deeply into his serious eyes. “If Super A didn’t think you were safe, do you think he’d have let me follow you down here? Do you think he would even have you in his tower if he didn’t trust you?”

“Tony’s reckless and-”

“Yeah, he is, but not with other people’s lives. Do you know how many people work here? Well neither do I but there’s lot of them, and he’s responsible for their safety and if he trusts you with them then I trust you with me. Besides,” she added, “ I saw the news. The Hulk’s a hero. Heroes are cool.”

“You’re...either remarkably insightful of incredible stupid. I really can't quite work out which.” Bruce stated, sounding more than a little stunned.

“Therein lies my charm.” She replied, an enormous grin on her face. “You know, we actually have a native Asgardian speaker in the building with us. Why don’t we just ask him what all this means?” She gestured at the growing pile of paper. “I'm pretty sure he'd cooperate with us. He wants the collar off, we want the collar off.” Catching sight of her companion's expression, she quickly added, “That is what we’re planning on doing, right?”

Bruce stood up and moved slowly over to the counter that held the grey sand from the tank, polishing his glasses on his shirt tails as he did so.

“Loki is...unpredictable. What’s been done to him is beyond deplorable but, we can’t trust him. Not yet.” He replaced his glasses and picked up the topmost of the Asgardian books and handed it to Darcy. “We don’t know what’s in these, not exactly. He could find the key to getting the collar off on the first page and then where would we be? He doesn't have an army this time but could you imagine the damage an emotionally unstable god could do if he suddenly had full control of his powers? The last time he relied mostly on his staff and the Chitauri but Thor gave us a pretty clear impression of what Loki could do if he put his mind to it. He killed a lot of people and hurt a great deal more and I really don’t see Asgard sending healing stones to all the physically and emotionally damaged people that got in his way. I’m not saying that making him a slave is a good thing, it frankly repulses me on so many levels, but if he’s going to be here for a while...it’s not a bad idea that we have a way of keeping him under control.”

“He’s going to kill millions of people with fairy stories?” She asked, incredulous, the book in her hands having fallen open to page dominated by illustrated dragons, their flaming breath depicted with beautiful gold leaf flecks.

“We don’t know why that book was in there. We only started with the red book because it was the biggest and looked the most promising.”

The first thing Jarvis had translated was the titles of the books, based on the assumption that if one was entitled ’Your New Slave: A Guide for Beginners’ or ’Removing Collars for Dummies’, then that would be the most important one to start reading. Sadly, none of the books had a title remotely like that. The red book they had started with was ’Of Dark and Mystic Bindings’, the next book on the list was simply titled ’Jotunheimr’, the third was proving totally untranslatable and the fourth was the collection of fairy tales that Darcy held.

The last book had prompted a mass of speculation; the other tommes seemed to have been included for fairly obvious reasons, but no one could fathom why a children’s book would have been in the chest. A society that had sent him into the ownership of a known enemy hardly seemed the type to consider any potential homesickness he may feel and send a childhood novel to comfort him. Darcy snapped the thin book shut and passed it into You’s waiting claw. 

When the three of them had exited the elevator, the robot had wheeled over happily, or as happy as something with no discernible human features can be, to greet its creator but it then proceeded to completely dismiss him in favour of making enthusiastic circles around the young woman, emitting trills of excitement and interest. Darcy of course, had been completely enamoured and allowed the robot to lead her around the floor. Showing her its charging station, the replicator, even going as far as to demonstrate some of its tasks to the bemused but oddly flattered woman. When Darcy had taken up residence on the sofa, it had stayed by her side, ready to help if she needed it.

Bruce had seen such behaviours from Dummy before, the robot had not come by its name purely my chance, but You and Butterfingers were normally far more reserved around guests.

Tony had waved off the strange behaviour dismissively as he entered the boxed off section of the room.

“They all do that for Pep. I don’t really bring women down here, come to that, I don’t really bring anyone down here. He’s probably just reacting like this because she’s new.”

“He didn’t do this for me when I was new.”

“Oh Brucie!” Tony lamented. “Am I not enough for you? Is my undying love and affection insufficient for your emotional needs? Seriously though, they probably had all intention of mobbing you but their directives cut in and stopped them. Startling a guy who could potentially misinterpret the situation and send them through three feet of concrete would most likely come under ’actions likely to cause damage’. Don’t take it so hard big guy, we can work on it.” Then he’d grinned and locked himself away before Pepper caught him being distracted.

Now, almost two hours after Tony put himself in Time Out, Bruce watched the robot eagerly accept the book but then let out a litany if bleeps before swivelling his claw and placing it carefully back on the arm of the sofa.

“What up bro-bot? I don’t need that one anymore, you can put it back on the pile.”

You made a plaintive noise and nudged the book closer. When Darcy failed to respond he delicately took the cover in his claw and flipped the pages until the book once again lay open on the illustration the woman had held up to show Bruce. The scientist sat down next to her and pulled it onto his lap.

“Jarvis?”

“Yes, Doctor Banner?”

“The collar on Loki’s neck, can you bring up a picture of it.”

“Of course.”

A holographic replica of the Nidavellir collar sprung into being directly in front of the sofa. Darcy looked pointedly up at it and back to the intertwined dragons in the picture. To one _particular_ dragon, one on whose proud neck lay a chain that bore a striking resemblance to the one that was making slow revolutions before their incredulous eyes.

"Jarvis?"

"Yes Miss Lewis?"

"I think Tony needs to see this, right now."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter is actually partially written for the same reason that this one is quite short. I had intended to switch half way through this one to Loki's meeting with Pepper but try as I might, it just didn't fit. It will be coming soon though.  
> Hope you still liked this one.


	16. Who Run the World?

 

Loki had a healthy respect for women installed in him at a very early age. His mother, second in power only to her husband, oversaw the function of the palace and its staff. The sight of her issuing instructions and seeing them followed was a far more common a sight for the young princes than that of their father performing a similar duty.

Similarly, Anneth, who had served as wet nurse and nursery maid to them both, had figured so prominently in their early lives that they had almost grown to believe that women ran all of Asgard, but life is never quite as simple as it appears when one is still a child.

The Allfather,in his infinite wisdom, had decreed that it had long passed the time for the boys to appear in court. Not the full length hearings that stretched endlessly on from morning to night, but to small gatherings at least. It was important, he had said, for the people of Asgard to see their princes and for the princes to know what transpired within the realm.

And so, stuffed into their highly braided and highly uncomfortable formal tunics, Thor and Loki began to learn the world of politics. Very little was asked of them, of course. Neither of them were far beyond the days of playing with toys and had only just begun their instruction in runes and numeracy, but they were expected to stay still and silent all the same.

Thor had struggled with the concept immensely and had been threatened more than once with the prospect of being laced to his chair if he could not stay still of his own free will. The older prince had grumbled but, unwilling to see if their father would actually follow through on his threat, he had suffered it in sullen silence.

Loki had never found the sessions as hard as Thor, but he had something in abundance that his brother sorely lacked. While Thor staved off boredom, watching the amassed courtiers with disdain and listening only absently to the grievances voiced and then counsel given, his younger brother staged epic battles across the marble floors of the hall. Acrobats defied nature and swung effortlessly from the highly domed ceilings while below them, a proud and defiant chimera leaped as they passed. Claws striking sparks against the flagstones and its lashing serpent tail spitting poison into the air.

He had tried to explain his imaginings to his brother, but Thor simply could not see it the way he did. After a while he abandoned the effort and retained the imaginary world for himself.

It was on such a day that Loki saw the rainbows dancing across the floor. At first he was sure that it was the product of his own creativity, but as the young girl was ushered forward he found that it was not so.

A myriad of minute crystals of exemplary quality had been woven into the strands of her golden mane of hair. They caught the light as she moved and cast exquisite patterns of light in a halo around her. Loki knew at that moment that he had never seen anything so lovely in all of his life. With childish abandon he drank in the sight of her, so different from either himself or his brother. 

A gown of sunrise rose and gold fanned out softly behind her, swishing hypnotically as she approached and pooling gently out like a ripple around her as she curtseyed deeply to the throne dais. As if in a dream he saw the Allfather rise and acknowledge her. 

Her _declaration_ , Loki realised with a start. As a member of High Aesir nobility, on the morning of her two hundreth year, she would be formally annouced to the court and receive her family title. 

From her place atop her throne, the Allmother was all to aware of the looks that her two sons were giving the newly appointed Lady Sif. Her eyes sought out those of Sif’s mother and they shared a knowing look; their children would be seeing a great deal of each other in the coming years if they both had their way.

And so, the moment that court was dismissed, Loki found himself face to face with the object of his sudden affection. With widening eyes, he saw that all of the courtiers were filing out and that their parents were in the process of leaving also. What would he do all alone with this strange but wonderful creature? He did not know what to say to girls. The Lady Sif stood before him like a princess from his story books and all he could bring himself to do was gape mutely at her like a landed fish. With a sudden rush of embarrassment, he realised that she had spoken to him and not only had he failed to answer, he also had no idea what she had even said!

“I am so sorry, my lady. I beg your pardon. What was it you said?”

“Our mothers, my prince, have left us to become better acquainted.” The sourness in her tone was not quite harsh enough to disguise the innate musicality it carried. With dismay, he saw that her features had transformed into a scowl and he cursed at his own incompetence. He was good with words, he should know what to say. What was it that princes said to princess? He knew he had been taught this. But then, the Lady Sif, seeing that the hall had emptied was not acting very much like _any_ princess he had ever heard of.

The sparkling sandals that had previously been hidden under the many layers of her skirts were in the process of being torn off with a haste that suggested they had been crafted of burning iron rather than the fine leather that they were. That done, Lady Sif reached back in a most unladylike manner and, not so much as loosened than _ripped_ the lacing of her corsetry loose. Giving a deep sigh of pure relief she then focused her efforts on her hair. Pulling it irritably over one shoulder and roughly plaiting it, plucking out the crystals as she went. Finally knowing what to say, Loki fished in his pocket and drew out a length of cord.

Fierce eyes flashed up at him as he offered it to her.

“What are you looking at?” She demanded.

“Oh nothing! Nothing my lady, I just...” He trailed off, holding the thin strip of leather up hopefully. With an undecided grunt, she took the cord and restrained her mane with a series of knots.

“It’s Sif.”

“Pardon?”

She huffed at him, swinging the plait behind her and drawing up to her full height.

“My _name_ ,” she clarified, “is Sif. Not _Lady_ Sif.”

“Then, you must call me Loki.” 

The small smile that began to soften her expression fled abruptly at Thor’s whining tone.

“Come _on_ Loki, I want to go out and play _now_.”

“Do you want to come and play with us Sif?” Loki asked, hesitantly. Whatever her answer might have been it was nevertheless drowned out by Thor’s infuriated cry.

“A _girl_!? We don’t want a _girl_ playing with us Loki! They are silly and soft and only care about dresses. She  can’t come on adventures with us, just leave her here.”

The scowl was back in full force now and Loki was sure that if he had been in her position, he would have been in tears, but it she felt like crying, she was holding it back fiercely. He watched her sadly, not knowing what he could say to make it better. Her movements were jerky with barely contained embarrassed anger as she pulled the uncomfortable shoes back onto her feet.

“Thor,” Loki began, turning back to his brother, fully intending to pursuance him to let the girl play with them when he was suddenly and roughly pushed out of the way. He was absolutely shocked when he realised that Sif had been the one to do so, barging past him and kicking his unprepared brother squarely between the legs.

“They are really very pointy,” she explained a minute later, lifting up the hem of her gown up to show Loki the glittering points. “And the dress is so poofy that I can kick all the way up high, see.” And she showed him and Loki watced with abject captivation as the wonderfully impossible girl executed high kick after high kick in the Great Hall of Asgard, wearing a gown of impractical beauty while all the while the crown prince lay curled into a ball, wheezing gently.

 Sif, it transpired, had an older brother who was already  a grown man and guarding the Bifrost.

“He told me that it is not honourable to strike a man thusly,” she explained, “but that sometimes, you have to use the weapons at hand.”

Thor, who had not told anyone of her actions, more for the preservation of his pride than hers, had looked at her as though she had spoken in tongues. 

“Why should you ever need to defend yourself? You are a woman and a high-born one at that. Girls shouldn’t want to fight when they grow up, they should...have babies and sew and stuff.”

He was back down on the ground before he could think to apologise.

He didn’t learn though. He never did.

 

A full century passed before they met again, at the training school of Master Ghrey. Thor had scoffed at the sight of her, training sword clutched in her hand and light armour strapped to her slight frame, but when she was paired with Loki instead of with himself, he sulked for a week.

Time had forged a rift between them. There were many things that Loki had said and done to her over the centuries that he sorely wished he could retract, but he never once forgot the lessons she had taught him. So when the door to his cell opened to reveal a stunningly attractive woman wearing impracticality high and pointed footwear, his heart sank through the floor.

 

Pepper Potts, CEO of StarkIndustries and international icon of efficiency, knocked crisply on the door to the blue room and waited a moment before sweeping elegantly in. The knock was a politeness only, the room could not be opened from within.

She was well aware of the effect she had on men; she had honed it like the weapon that it was. She was well versed in the subtle balance that one must strike between feminine grace, in order to charm a potential business interest, and the steely hardness and formidible intelligence that was required for them to take you seriously. 

The outfit was the most important part, first impressions were hard to retract once made. Another woman may have struggled when wondering what to wear when meeting a mentally unbalanced god, but those women were not Pepper. So, resplendent in a bespoke charcoal grey skirt suit, carefully counterbalanced with a silk shirt of seafoam green, she got her first good look at the man that had nearly killed her best friend.

Tall and gaunt and silent.

Younger than she had imagined, tall frame awkward in borrowed clothes, the dark colour leeching away what little colour he had left. She had wanted him to be impressed, intimidated perhaps. He was not supposed to view her as a victim but she hardly expected him to flinch at the sight of her.

Startling green eyes looked her carefully up and down. She was used to this, many men did it out of habit but Loki’s eyes were not lingering on her chest, they were glued to the pair six inch Louboutin sandals that wrapped around her feet.

The last traces of colour fled from his face and he took an involuntary step backwards, knocking his back against  the desk. 

“Do you mind if I take them off?”

Incredulous eyes burned into hers. Whatever he had expected her to say, that hadn’t been it.

“The shoes.” She explained. “It’s quite difficult to walk on thick carpet in them, that’s why most of the office levels are either marble or hardwood flooring. Do you mind if I take them off?” He shook his head in mute answer and Pepper smiled reassuringly at him as she took them off, setting them neatly by the door.

“Would you like a seat?” The god offered, gesturing to the pair of high backed chairs that rested by the window. There really was nowhere else to sit other than the bed and he was quite sure that inviting the woman to lie beside him would provoke Stark into a fit of homicidal hysteria. The desk would also prove an adequate surface for the multitude of items that she had brought in with her. Loki had briefly considered reaching for them himself but he was unsure if the action would be misconstrued as an attack and he had no doubts that Jarvis would follow through on his threat if his behaviour was considered hostile in nature.

“Thank you, Loki,” she said, taking the offered chair and placing the briefcase and tablet computer she had carried in with her on the desk between them. “May I call you that?”

“If you wish” he replied, hesitantly seating himself on the vacant chair, knowing the impression he cut. Unwashed, overtired and in borrowed and ill fitting garments. His mother would have pitched a fit to see him entertaining company in such a state. But then again, he was hardly entertaining, he was in the beginning stages of an interrogation and his mother had stood aside while he was shackled and banished, so he really could not bring himself to care much about what she thought of his manners or lack thereof.

Watching the slightly built woman neatly stack the bags on the table, he considered his options. He had seen this scene before and been both the receiver and the recipient of this pla; a lot hinged on how he chose to react to it.

You were given two choices. You either accepted the polite conversation and niceties that came with the first visitor they sent you. This was the easy option. You were alone and most likely scared and no-one would blame you for confiding in the first person to show you any kindness, and when they got all the answers they needed from you, you may even get fed or offered some hope that you would be released soon. Or, you could decide to rant and rave and refuse to answer and see how far that got you.

More often than not, it lead to the ’friendly’ individual leaving and for the decidedly unfriendly people to enter. They would inevitably ask the same questions, but they would phrase them with pain and you would answer in screams.

He was in no position to fight. The meagre portion of his magics he had available to him would not protect him from anything less than a life ending blow and he was under no illusions that the spider and her archer could inflict a great deal of pain before his powers could interpret them as life threatening.

“So,” she began brightly, settling into her own chair, “how is everything so far? Are you comfortable?”

A thousand lies sprung to the forethought of his mind. ’Of course not, you iron screwed whore’ was unlikely to advance his situation, likewise, playing along and pretending that he was residing in the springs of the Veltain would be a clear indicator of his unwillingness to cooperate. These people knew him, a twisted shade brought forth through torture and betrayal but similar enough for them to never believe that he was helpless. Abject innocence would serve him as ill as malice in this place.

“Yes, this cell far more to my taste. The illusion of privacy, if not the actuality.”

Pepper’s eye’s flitted to the corners of the room. 

“Would it help if I told Jarvis to stop recording for the duration of our meeting?” She offered.

“Would it help if I told you that I wish no harm on either you nor on the inhabitants of this tower?” He countered.

“Well, it would prove that we are both accomplished liars.” The woman’s smile was even but her gaze was assessing. “And that we are both old enough and experienced enough to not fall into such obvious traps.” 

Loki felt a true and natural smile spread across his face for the first time it what seemed like decades. This was no simpering female sent with the intent of appealing to his maternal needs or providing a sympathetic ear to his plight. A cool intelligence gleamed from her alert eyes, betraying the calculating mind behind the open and friendly expression. Oh it had indeed been a long time since he’d found a woman who played the games that he did. He had known a fair few who could best him in battle, but far fewer who could meet him on the field of wit. 

“Why Miss Potts, do you doubt my intentions? Surely I am  completely at your mercy.” He gave her a lingering look, implying that he was at her mercy in every respect.

Pepper gave a polite cough and pointedly tapped on the screen of her tablet. 

“I suggest, for the purposes of now and in this place, that we are truthful with each other. Or as truthful as either of us is capable of being. Agent Coulson, who is a very good friend of mine and I advise that you remember that, has asked me to explain a few things to you.”

A hologram flickered into being a few inches above the screen and revolved slowly in the space between them. Loki’s face, bathed in the blue glow of the projection, became a carefully blank mask. He knew the plans for the tower, it only made sense that he had understood his enemies  stronghold and the base from which his portal could be activated before he installed it. Yet it made no discernible sense for her to be showing him what was most likely an updated schematic of his prison.

“These levels here,” she said, a gesture with her stylus causing a large section of the tower to expand and fill with green light, “are employee zones. Stark Tower, despite the name that the public have taken to calling it, is exactly what it says on the tin: a StarkIndustries building. We have twelve floors of Research and Development in addition to thirty-six other floors devoted to Marketing, Accounts and Administration. We employ a great many people here and while the compulsory agreement forms deviate a great deal from the accepted list on the subject of workplace hazards, we have a duty of care to them.

You may not have noticed, but we implemented a mass evacuation of Stark Tower yesterday morning, due to your sudden appearance and the fact that we had not assessed the level of threat that you posed to them at that time. We fully intend to re-open the tower tomorrow and so, until such a time that we have a clearer picture on both your intentions and limitations, these floors will be completely out of bound for you.”

“I am not to be contained within this room indefinitely?”

Her expression caused him to immediately regret his interruption.

“I was under the impression that you had opted not to be placed under house arrest, was I mistaken?” Silence. “Good, I hate being misinformed. In answer to your question, no, we are not planning to lock you up and throw away the key though it was suggested more than once. Agent Coulson, for reasons currently known only to him, has decided to instate you as an agent-in-training. This means that, while you are subject to the rules and regulations that all Shield operatives are subject to, you are also afforded a similar degree of freedom. Unlike any other trainee agent, however, _you_ will be kept under constant supervision until such a time that we feel you have earned the right to greater freedom. Are we clear so far?”

“Crystal.”

“That makes me so glad, I do hate repeating myself. As I was saying,” she moved her stylus sideways on the screen and the holographic tower returned to its previous colour and panned up to display the upper levels of the building where a blinking red light and a stationary one  occupied a room in the centre of the building. “This is us. Red lights equal Avengers or others with clearance to be on these floors.” She slid a palm sized device across the desk towards him. “All the relevant schematics are loaded on that already. It will make a  beeping sound if you have entered or are close to entering an area that is off limits to you so I suggest that you turn right around if you hear it.

You currently have access to the library, workout room 3 and the kitchen and dining areas on floor 61. The padd will keep a track of your movements so you will be able to see where you are within the tower.” Another tap to the base of the screen and the hologram compacted itself and disappeared.

Loki looked more than a little shell-shocked in the aftermath of such a large amount of information. Pepper decided to take pity on him. Stretching out, she circled his wrist in a light grasp.

“Jarvis will help you if you need anything okay? There are a couple of changes of clothes in the large blue bag and toiletries in the smaller one. Phil’s put a few things in there as well.” His perplexed expression did not change as she got up and walked over to the door. It swung gently open, revealing glimpses of the corridor beyond. She hovered, unwilling to leave him alone in such a state. “He wants to help. I think all of the team do. Just.” She cut off abruptly. “Think about your end goal here. Say that we get that collar off, what then? You could have a place here, if you wanted it. Just, think about it."

 

* * *

 

“Agent Coulson, as I live and breath, what does it take to kill you?”

“Now if I told you that, it wouldn’t be a secret.”

“Quite true. How can I help you?”

“I’ve been assigned a new agent, completely new to Shield and he needs processing as quickly as possible. Normally I wouldn’t do this as they get their papers sorted while they go through basic, but Director Fury wants him on specialist track, so I'll be overseeing the first few months personally. He’s going to need identification before we go street side, so for the moment, we’re limited to Shield approved locations. Would there be any chance of getting him bumped up on the list?”

“Only because it’s you Coulson. I suppose I could clear a spot nearer the top. What do we need? Green card, social security number and passport? If you give me the name I can bring up their file and start erasing it. I'm assuming that you want a complete history wipe; no one goes straight to you without gaining a record on someone’s database, no offence. Should I start on Interpol or is he better than that?”

“Far better. No one will have anything on him other than us.”

Phil listened to as the faint noises of typing sped up on the other side of the phone.

“So...we’re going to need a birth certificate, education and employment records, proof of residence, credit history...as well as all of the other documents. It is a damn good thing that I like you Phil Coulson, a damn good thing.”

“You really are the best person for the job.”

“I am the only person for the job.”

“And you are truly amazing at it. I’ve just sent the details over to you, he’s going to need a Shield I.D package as well. There might be a few issues with wages but it’s all explained in my notes. We’ll be there to pick them up tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Thank you Catherine, We’ll see you then.”

“Don’t bring Barton-”

_Click_.

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title shamelessly stolen from Beyonce :)  
> Between Sif, Natasha and Pepper, poor Loki has no end of BAMF women on his case.
> 
> Still not beta read, much love for anyone who helps me out by spotting any mistakes. X


	17. The Learning of Seidr

 

“You must learn to ground yourself, feel the ground beneath you and draw your power up through it.” 

The Seidrmann’s raspy voice scrapped uncomfortably against his thoughts, leaving them raw and ungraspable. Of all of their tutors, he was the one Loki despised the most.

As with all of their lessons, the art of magic, or seidr to give it it’s more accurate term, was taught to both of the princes at the same time. For the most part, the wizened elf spouted history at them, which they were expected to memorise and be able to recite back at a moment’s notice. This was a tedious and frustrating process but the Seidrmann the Allfather had sent for was the most learnéd in all the Nine Realms and so his word, within the schooling room, was law.

They had consoled themselves with the knowledge that one day soon, they would harness the power of seidr and perform magic of their own. That would be a happy day indeed, for once their talents manifested, the dry droning old man would be sent away and new specific tutors would be summoned for them.

That long awaited day had finally arrived. The Seidrmann  had assessed them that very morning and announced that they were at last ready to forge their connection to Yggdrasil and find where their abilities lay.

They were both well versed in the theory of seidr.

All citizens of the Nine Realms were born with it intrinsically bound into their souls. It was what separated them from the beasts in the field and the other lower forms of life. 

All things were connected of course, but only the Aesir, Vanaheimr and Elven races had souls in which their seidr could grow. Giants and other monsters may use things that are akin to magic, but it came not from the Tree, but from their own dark sorcery. Monsters have no souls after all .

All people had the ability to call on the Tree’s power in times of need. The young princes had studied the well documented case of a lowly farmhand who, having seen a cart fall upon his youngest son, unconsciously sent a plea through his bond to Yggdrasil and was granted the strength of ten men with which he overturned the cart and rescued his child. There were many other tales of ordinary folk performing extraordinary feats through their connection. A traveller, trapped by a falling rock, who had survived for a month with neither food nor water until his rescue and a group of women who had erected a nimbus of protective magic around themselves and their children when their village came under act by marauding ogres. All strength and abilities freely given by the Tree but then returned when the need for them had past.

While all men could call on the power of the Tree, what set some apart was the ability to both actively draw the  seidr into themselves, and also to use it to kindle the spark of magic within themselves, so that their powers could develop and grow. Such abilities, once learnt, would not return to Yggdrasil but stay with a man’s own soul to be called upon when needed.

Women, they learnt, were different.

“ _Females_ ,” the dry voice of the Seidrmann had rasped, “have a natural affinity to Yggdrasil and her nurturing powers. They have no need to ignite their own spark for they have none. A spark produces a flame which burns brightly within a Seidrmann’s soul all of his life. An inferno of power to be crafted to purpose.

Women have no need for such ferocious magics and while there are, in extremely rare circumstances, exceptional cases in which a female child shows aptitude towards the higher learnings of seidr, few put it to proper use.” Allusions were made to the licentious and immoral behaviours of sorceress at this point. Thor had droned out but Loki, who had a far more extensive vocabulary than his brother, had listened intently.

“The life giving seidr of the World Tree washes through women like a wave. Mellifluous magics of healing and prophesy are far more suited to their ilk. Therefore, all women, being naturally more receptive to the Tree’s life giving powers, are to some degree, naturally imbued with seidr.”

Thor had the cheek to ask why their Seidr tutor was a man in that case and not a woman, if they were naturally better at magic. He had received a clip around the ear for his troubles and a stern lecture from his father on the proper manner of addressing one’s tutors for his troubles.

When the Seidrmann finally deigned to have the elder prince return to his classes, he explained that while women had a natural aptitude to magic, there was a distinct and definitive difference in the standard and quality of the magic that the difference sexes produced. His tone left no room to imagine which of these magics he thought superior.

Loki almost wished that Sif had proven to be one of those ’extremely rare cases’. If she, like they, had a spark to be ignited, she would have insisted on proper instruction in the art. It would have been frowned upon, but she had been adamant about training as a warrior, and though tongues had wagged and eyebrows furrowed, no one could deny that she was in the top five percentile of Master Ghrey’s class.

It was amusing to picture the expression on the sour tutor’s face, if he were told that he must instruct a girl in his craft. But when her time had come to be tested for such a thing, the Orb had not reacted in the slightest. He had felt sorry for her in that moment, but having spent a considerable amount of time learning the history of seidr with the decrepit and impatient Seidrmann, he thought that perhaps she had been lucky.

So, here he was, all of the knowledge and theory of seidr learned by wrote. All he needed now was to kindle his spark and he would never have to see the cragged sneering face of the Seidrmann ever again.

The only problem was, and admittedly it was a problem of  frankly astronomical proportions, Loki could not make the initial connection.

He had tried, he really had. Night upon night in his chambers, reaching into the void, casting his mind out like a net only to draw back nothing. He knew what should happen, it was documented in every single text on the subject. Clearing his consciousness, he should be able to feel the tendrils of Yggdrasil’s mighty roots stretching through the universe, reaching out to him and beckoning him to their source. But try as he might, all Loki managed to feel was a blinding headache. 

“I...I think I feel something?” Loki’s eyes cracked open, incredulous at his brother’s words. How could his brother possibly have felt it before he did? Thor had the emotional density of a puddle and meditation came as easily to him as ballet came to a troll.

In sickening anticipation, he watched as the wizened man  glided over, his robes rustling along the marble floor like a snake’s half shed skin, and placed one gnarled hand on the golden prince’s forehead. 

A small smile began to spread across his ancient face like ooze dripping down a cavern wall. 

“ _Ahhh_...your power lies not at the roots of the Great Tree but at her branches. Do you feel her core? Reach gently as I have told you, you will be drawn to it.”

“It’s...warm?” Thor’s face, previously scrunched in concentration, smoothed out into an expression of wonder. It was as though a curtain had been drawn aside and he was suddenly in the presence of something of breathtaking beauty.

Loki’s heart lurched. How had Thor managed it on his first try, when he himself had been practicing unsuccessfully for weeks?

“Good.” The word was a hiss of air, fetid breath flowing past rotten teeth and Loki winced absently in sympathy for his brother, so close to that rotten maw. “You must journey up her trunk, feel the power in her bark, the strength in that vast stretch. Work your way up to the branches, see how they fan out before you? Now reach, you must find the tips. The leaves will part for you, pay them no heed. Now, do you feel it.”

“Yes.” The response was clearer now, firm with conviction and Loki’s eyes widened as he saw the sparks of electricity dance along his brother’s fingertips. Thor must have felt it to, for he opened his eyes in confusion before shouting in mounting panic and alarm. The manifestation of his magic dissipated almost as soon as it had appeared and the seidrmann made short work of dispelling the pain it had wrought. His eyes still glinted harshly from the folds of his ancient face, but Thor’s progress had obviously pleased him.

“You have elemental magic, my young prince. A certain, sensitivity to the tempestuous powers of nature. 

The seidr must be channeled though, a staff perhaps, so that your powers may flow from the tips of the Life Tree and out through you.”

“Can I not channel it for myself Seidrmann? It would be a fine power indeed to call the might of the lightning to my hand and strike down my enemies from afar- _Ahh_!”

“Foolish boy,” the old man chastised, one claw like hand seizing the prince’s and tugging it upwards. “Do you see what bringing even a little power to your flesh has caused? Imagine if you were you were to attempt to conduct the full strength of a lightning storm through these little digits? Bah.” He released the hand with disdain. “Eir herself would not have the power to restore what would be left of your arm, if you were alive to be worth saving that is. Power such as this cannot be contained within your soul, it must be drawn and then released. You have power, true, but the subtleties of spell-craft is not for you. 

Blunt power for a blunt mind. Perhaps your brother will prove more promising?”

Loki snatched only a momentary glance of his brother’s pride turning to sullen rage before the view was blocked out by the Seidrman’s imposing form.

Screwing his eyes painfully closed and concentrating fiercely on spreading out his awareness, Loki felt a sweat break out across his brow as he desperately cast out his mind again and again. Senses stretched to breaking point, _reaching_ and _feeling_ and _praying_.

’Please please _please_ ’, he begged. ’Come on you _stupid_ tree.’

It was to late.

The parchment thin skin of the Seidrmann’s clammy palm was already pressing against his head, the sharp nails digging painfully into the sensitive flesh of his scalp.

For one long moment they held the tableau. Loki holding his breath, lungs beginning to burn from lack of air, the old man looming over him, hoping against all odds that this time it would work.

“Bah!” The old man’s shout startled the prince so much that he cried out in alarm, his oxygen starved lungs taking advantage and pulling in a great pull of air. Reeling from the combination of the sudden exclamation, the rush of air to his head and the painful stinging that the Seidrmann’s nails had scored in his scalp, Loki could only look up into the filmy eyes of the old man with undiluted terror.

There was a revulsion carved deeply into the lines of that craggy face that went far beyond the short fallings of a student. There was real abhorrence in the pallid depths of his eyes.

“No talent,” he spat. “None at all. I have never know the orb to be in error before but it is quite plain that it is now.” The foulness of the man’s breath was nothing compared to the poison in his tone. “I shall inform the Allfather this instant.”

Lips pulled back in a snarl of disgust he turned away from the boys and began roughly gathered his materials. Sweeping books from the lectern and roughly rolling up scrolls and shoving them into his bag.

Both princes looked on mutely. Too filled with a mixture of fear and apprehension to comment on the bizarre behaviour of their tutor. They flinched in unison as he wheeled around to face them, specks of spittle spraying from his mouth as he spoke.

“You,” he pointed at Thor. “I shall send word to my colleague in Vanaheim, he will know best how to instruct you further in the arts of aeromancy. _You_ , however.” Loki blanched to have those contemptuous eyes boring into his once more. “I will not teach you; there is nothing I can teach you. Good day.” And with a curt bow and sweep of crackling robes he was gone from the room.

Thor had seen how the blood had drained from his brother’s face and made it to Loki’s side barely a moment before the younger boy’s legs went from under him. With a grunt of effort, he caught his brother under the arms and lowered him gently to the floor.

“Loki? Are you well? Do you want me to take you to the healing room?”

His brother shook his head, his hair falling down and concealing his face. His words, when he did speak, were so soft they were almost inaudible. Thor had to strain to hear them.

“...why can’t I do it?” 

“Oh Loki. Magic is not the be all and end all of all things! So what if you cannot feel Yggdrassil? It will not make you less of a warrior or a brother to me. That skeleton is probably deficient in any case. The way that he spoke to me, I have half a mind to go to father now and tell him to send the old fool away and make sure that no person ever hires him again! What can he know of magic? It has probably all leeched out of him and now all he has been left with is a soul full of cobwebs and dust.”

Picking himself up and brushing himself down, Thor sighed at his brother’s prone form. He was far to old to be behaving this way.

“Is magic that important to you?” He asked, his tone brisk and bordering on the annoyed.

Another shake of the head.

“Then why does the lack of it reduce you to a weeping maiden. Is that why you hide your face? Have coarse words driven you to tears brother?” Thor laughed in derision and seized hold of Loki’s shoulder, jerking it backwards so that his face could be seen.

With a sudden cry of alarm, Thor lurched away. His feet caught on themselves and he tripped, landing heavily back down to the floor. Seeing his brother rise, Thor scrambled backwards, breath catching, unable to get back up. 

“You want to know why I am upset?” Loki’s soft voice drifted towards him. “You wish to know why the Seidrmann’s words have left me so? Well look hard brother, look and ask yourself if you would be upset to see yourself thus!”

With a sudden burst of speed, Thor got his legs under him once more and ran from the room as though all the demons of Hel were at his back. The burning image of furious blood-red eyes seared in his mind.

 

* * *

 

Take one breath, hold, then release. Good. Another.

His mind in turmoil, a state that seemed almost second nature to him now, Loki sank back into familiar exercises and let his body take control.

Par down your thoughts. 

What is needed?

Freedom

Home

Safety 

What is _needed_?

Warmth

With stiff mechanical actions, he opened first one bag and then the other. A set of clothing lay at the top of one, plain but serviceable. He bundled them under his arm and walked the short distance to the bathroom. Sweat drenched soiled clothes were discarded as he went, a trail of neglect from the desk to the bathtub.

The screen was pushed aside, the clean clothes draped over the lip of the sink and Loki stepped silently into the bath tub.

Dials

Buttons

Switches

An entire panel of incomprehensible options. 

Think

The pages of stolen memories were flicked through until a match was found. New understanding and fingers were already tweaking the controls like they had created them.

A sudden cascade of scalding water surged through the pipes and came crashing down on Loki’s pale body.

“Sir?” A concerned tone swept through the room. “The water temperature you have selected is approaching unsafe levels. If you do not adjust the setting then you will become scalded and my emergency protocols will be activated. Do you understand?”

Hands splayed against the tile, head pushed down by the relentless torrent of water, Loki made no response nor did he attempt to move as the spray slowly painted his body red.

 

* * *

 

Thor had crashed into his study with such force that it sent books flying from shelves and delicate instruments crashing to the ground in a cacophony of destruction.

The roar of outrage and reprimand died in the Allfather’s throat when he saw the deathly whiteness of his eldest son’s face. One look into those terrified eyes and the old man was already on his feet and followed as swiftly as he could to the teaching room where his youngest child had pushed himself into the darkest corner and was clinging to himself as though the world was ending.

“Thor, I need you to leave now.”

“But father-”

“ _Now_!” Seeing the shocked expression on the already overwrought young face and the way that Thor’s eyes kept flicking worriedly to the crumpled form of his brother, Odin softened his tone. “You did well by bringing me here son, but I need you to leave now so that I can help your brother.”

Clearly not wanting to leave but also unwilling to disobey his father, Thor left, shutting the door gently behind him.

Letting out a low exhale of breath, Odin lowered himself to his knees and took in the sight before him. Hesitantly, as though unsure of it’s welcome, he extended one calloused hand and rested it gently on the boy’s shoulder. 

Loki let out one racking sob before throwing himself into his father’s arms as he had not done in years. Momentarily stiffening but then releasing the tension in his frame, Odin hugged his son tightly to him, burying his grizzled face into Loki’s dark hair.

 

* * *

 

“Thank you for going in and seeing him, I understand that it was unlikely to have been comfortable for you.”

“Comfortable, no. Informative, yes.”

“How would you say he was?”

“Physically? Well, he could do with a couple of good meals but I’ve seen a lot worse. Mentally though... _confused_ , Phil, confused and scared. His behaviour was pretty erratic. He looked ready to faint when I walked in but not five minutes later he was, well, charming and then...”

“Do I need to contact Psychiatrics for this?”

A low exhale of breath. “It’s your call. For better or for worse, he’s your responsibility. You need to decide if what you’re planning is what’s best for him, or if it’s just what’s best for your agenda. 

The way he looked at me when I told him that you’d taken him on as a probationary agent...what did you say to him in there? He looked like he was expecting to be kept locked up in that room for the rest of his life; only brought out when you needed him for something. That’s no life.”

“I am well aware of that. Some of the things that I said to him were...regrettably harsh, but they needed to be said. Shield has taken on damaged goods before but there is a major difference between damage that can be repaired and damage that can’t.”

“Well if you want him for what I think you do, you’ve got a lot of work ahead of you. You can only push so far before...”

“I know.”

 

* * *

 

Odin wondered when his sons had gotten so big. It was a cliché, he knew, but it seemed that they had grown like saplings overnight and were almost fully grown. 

Well, he mused and he stroked his son’s hair unhurriedly in the comfortable silence of the room, maybe not quite fully grown.

Long coltish limbs had replaced the chubbiness of youth and muscle definition was beginning to show. It would be many years yet before they reached their full potential, but it was hard to look at them and see them only as children these days.

A knock had come a short while ago, the elegant form of his wife had brushed aside the curtain of his warding and peeked inside just long enough to affirm that both her husband and son were safe and not in need of her at that time. Since then, no one had disturbed them.

The king’s patience eventually bore fruit when Loki began to gently extract himself from his father’s arms.

“I don’t know about you,” Odin said, his voice gruff but kind, “but my old knees can’t take much more of this damn floor. What say you that we get up and move somewhere more comfortable before I become stuck in this position forever? Though I must admit, the idea of all of Asgard forced to bow fully prostrate to me or find themselves higher than their king is an a amusing one. Perhaps I can have the throne room modified for my new stature?”

His teasing words had the desired effect and a small smile could just seen behind the obscuring curtain of hair. With a series of over exaggerated grunts and groaning, Odin stood up and offered his hand to his son. Watery eyes the colour of rubies peered up at him with deep seated worry but a small hand was placed in his larger one with the same trust it always had.

“Now, I think I can remember a very good and thoroughly sneaky way of getting from here to my study without anyone seeing us. Would you like me to show you?”

A nod.

“Loki?” 

Another veiled glance through dark hair.

“Do you trust me?”

“Of course, father.”

“Then all will be well.”

 

* * *

 

Jarvis reacted to Loki’s lack of response by slowly lowering the temperature of the water to a level more manageable by human standards. The A.I was not to know that the god routinely bathed in magically heated water almost twice as hot as the shower’s top capacity, so he was forgiven for this action. The warm water had done it’s job. Feeling truly clean for the first time in weeks truly did wonders for one’s mental state and while he was still nowhere near a position he would have willingly placed himself, he could at least start assessing his options.

The gusts of warm air that vented through the discreet holes in the shower-side wall were a welcome surprise 

and did a better job of drying him than a towel could. Within a minute he was dressed in unfamiliar but serviceable clothes and studying his reflection in the full length mirror. 

He touched one fingernail to the glass and noted the angle of refraction before rapping sharply on it with a knuckle. A hollow reverberating echo greeted his efforts. Two way glass. No matter, his every movement was being caught on camera already and besides, all they would see was a man staring at himself for a very long time. How terribly boring it must be to only see what was on the outside of a person, Loki thought, and turned his gaze inward.

 

 

* * *

 

Safe in the privacy of his own chambers, Odin shepherded  his son close to the fire and sat him down in one of the  high backed leather chairs that sat sentiently before it. Once he was settled, the Allfather lowered himself into his own chair and turned it so that they were facing each other. The firelight danced over their features, one set broad and resolute, the other slight and downcast.

Loki had not spoken a word in all of the time it took to travel from the teaching room to the All father’s study. Though they encountered no one, he had retracted his hand from his father and wrapped both arms stubbornly about himself from the moment he was on his feet. Only now, with the warmth of the hearth seeping into him, did he begin to relax them.

“Your face is clouded, my son. I sense that you have many questions.” Odin’s tone was guarded. It was of vital importance that he found out what had happened without adding to the confusion by mentioning something that may not even have occurred to the boy.

“Have..?” Loki cleared his throat and began again. “Have I done something wrong father? Am I being punished? Am I cursed?” The way that Loki’s voice hitched on the last word was enough to make Odin reach out and grasp his son’s hands in his own, his chapped fists almost fully enclosing the boy’s in their protective grasp.

“ _No_ Loki, no. You are not cursed, you are special. You are _so_ very special to me.”

“Then why do I look like a monster?” The voice was not angry anymore, or even particularly sorrowful. It was tired though, tired and filled with a bone weary confusion.

Taking a deep breath, the man who had ruled Asgard for countless millennia steeled himself and moved one hand purposefully to the crown of his son’s head. Loki jerked back in shock, blood red eyes wide at the unexpected hurt the touch had caused.

“I just need to see what has happened, my son. The Seidrmann tells me that you have no magic, yet I see plain evidence to the contrary right here before me. I shall be gentle Loki, but it must be done.”

Eyes full of trepidation, Loki nevertheless nodded and leant forward to receive his father’s touch.

The moment his own magic met his son’s, Odin knew why the seidr tutor had reacted in the way that he had.

“Loki, I need you to clear your mind for me. Can you do that?”

“But I cannot feel Yggdrasil however hard I try.”

“You are not looking for Yggdrasil this time, just clear your mind and tell me what you see.”

Steeling himself for the blinding headache that inevitably followed, Loki took a deep breath and saw...a great bird. Filled with bewilderment, he began to open his eyes but the eagle opened its beak and spoke.

“No, Loki. You must concentrate on keeping your mind open and clear for me.”

“Father?” Just on the periphery of his awareness, Loki could feel the strong palm against his forehead, the settling weight of it on his scalp. He had heard his voice, and yet he did not feel his lips move.

“I need you to follow me son, there is something you must see.” The powerful bird of prey spread out its midnight wings and seemed to fly straight down through the darkness. Without knowing how or why, Loki felt himself following, the tail feathers fanned out before him.

Suddenly, Loki knew that anyone privy to his expression at that moment would see the same awestruck look that had graced Thor’s face not that long ago.

The Tree spread out before him, more vast than he could possibly comprehend and all around it he saw the shimmering threads that bound all the realm’s inhabitants to her. With a cry of relief and joy he saw that he too was connected. A barely there gossamer strand that was only just visible in the effulgent light stretched from right in front of him, all the way to Yggdrasil’s roots. When he looked down at himself to see where the strand was tethered however, he received such a stomach lurching jolt that it almost sent him right back to the physical plane.

There was no him!

The thread reached straight into the spot where his heart would have lain, but there was no body to encompass it. Only the myriad of stars that filled the void in which the Tree resided.

With relief he heard his father’s voice once more.

“Calm yourself. You are young and inexperienced, it will be a long time before you can exert any form of will in a place such as this. It cost me greatly just to have this much power.” And with a start of recognition, Loki saw the empty eye socket on one side of the eagle’s head and knew it to be true.

“Now, my son. We must locate your spark and see what all this commotion was in aid of.”

“But I cannot find it. It was one of the first exercises that we tried and even when he, when the Seidrmann, entered my mind he could not guide me.”

“How was it that the Seidrmann tried?”

“He sank into me and then pushed and pulled around like he was looking for it, but then he would give up.”

The eagle turned its one golden eye to him and spread out a wing so that the vast feathers gently curved against the small part of awareness that was Loki.

“I think that the esteemed Seidrmann needs to learn the definition of guiding. Now, did Thor find his spark?”

“Yes, almost right away, but he did not make his connection until today.”

“I would have thought as much. Did the Seidrmann tell you what your spark is?”

“He told me that some special people have one and that the orb indicates who does. He said that skilled magic users can ignite their spark with seidr from Yggdrasil and then continue drawing her power into themselves to build that fire up so that the individual always has a hearth of seidr within themselves to draw on.”

“That man is a blithering idiot.”

Loki looked up incredulously at the eagle, he never heard his father speak that way about anyone and it was still jarring to hear that familiar voice emerging from a beak. “That tree, was that Yggdrasil?”

“Yes.”

“Then how was it that we were able to see all of her, from her roots almost to the tips of her branches when she holds entire world within her boughs? What you saw was a representation of her. An image that we can hold in our minds and grasp on to.

Can you trace your thread back to her? Picture it, it will appear.” And the shimmering thread was suddenly there again, though it felt that they had moved a great distance away in the time they had been speaking. “Picture yourself taking hold of the thread and tugging. Now, what do you feel?

“I feel it connecting all the way back to her roots.”

“That is not wrong, my son, but it is not exactly true either. You feel back to her roots because that is what you expect to feel. If I were to talk this way and make this journey with another being of an entirely different world, they may feel their connection spanning to something entirely different. 

The point that I am trying to make, is that just because you have been told to expect a spark, does not mean that there is a physical spark within you. It is just the image that works most effectively with the majority of those learning the arts of the seidr. 

Take your brother for example, tell Thor to find the spark within himself and he will imagine the drive that pushes him onwards, that inspires his competitive nature. That is his spark, his centre.”

“Do I not have a spark?”

“You have a centre Loki, but the image of a spark will not help you find it. Think carefully for me now. When I ask you to find your centre, what is there?”

The great eagle alighting gently on the ground that was spreading out from beneath his son’s feet, tucking its wings back against its body. The moment Loki had found his centre he began to corporealize himself within it and before long, the boy and the dark eagle stood at the side of a vast still pool of water.

Loki looked unimpressed.

“I think I would have preferred a fire.” He muttered.

The eagle made a sound that was probably the closest thing its beak could make to a bark of laughter.

“Think about this boy, I did not raise you to be a fool. What happens to a fire that is left unbanked? It breaks free and destroys everything in its path. And what if it is not fed? Should the Seidrmann fail to keep his or her connection to Yggdrasil open, their reserves will dwindle and die.

You have a rare gift, one that very few receive. Seidr is your birthright; you are a natural receptacle for it. 

Seidr is already in you, your soul is full of it.” It made a sweeping gesture with an outstretched wing. “This is you. I am unsurprised at why the Seidrmann took of in such a manner, water is very rare among our people and the inept may easily draw the wrong conclusion when faced with it.”

“So I have water magic?”

“Nothing nearly so simple. While you may gain skill in water manipulation, water is the shape of your soul. Water cannot be contained. If there is even the smallest gap for it to slip through, it will escape. Water is adaptable, it can be the light patter of summer rain or a tidal wave of destruction. It is the only element that can exist in any state, be that it’s own natural liquid state, mist in the air or as a solid...as ice.”

The eagle stopped and cocked its head to one side, taking in the full measure of the boy. Loki had begun to look into his soul pool with enlightened eyes, he was only just beginning to see the wealth of possibilities that lay before him. 

The Seidrmann had been right to flee that mind the moment he entered it. Ability like this, if left unchecked, could grow too quickly and overflow the mind of the wielder. Only madness lay down that path.

The eagle called out to Loki and a second later it had the boy’s arms around its strong feathered neck, his face pressed tightly into his shoulder where the wing began. Wanting to prolong the moment before this most unsavoury task, it wrapped both wings about the boy and held him close. A black cocoon of feathers between him and whatever could be lurking in the recesses of that pool.

It could not last forever though, and first one, then the other wing was retracted leaving the boy standing proudly before him, face brimming with happiness.

“Loki, I need you to be completely honest with me now. Has anything like this happened before? When your eyes changed, has anything else?”

His brow furrowed in concentration for a moment before he replied.

“I think maybe, I was scared, like I was after the Seidrmann went into my mind today. Well, I was only young but I woke up and I thought that maybe my hands had gone blue. I told Anneth and she said that it was only a nightmare but I didn’t forget it.”

Odin was thankful that the metaphysical manifestation of his seidr was incapable of flinching. 

“There is one thing that many who have soul pools share, Loki. Due to the mercurial and ever changing nature of water, it gives rise to a natural affinity for shapeshifting. Now I have never had the chance to observe the change that shifting, and that is what I believe you performed when you changed your eyes and perhaps also the colour of your hands, while still in the mind of that person while it is happening. You have trusted me enormously by showing me the seat of your power already.”

“But you were the one who showed me here.”

“That is true, but a person with ill intent could damage your use of seidr here, so it is of vital importance that you never allow another to see this place.

That being said, it would still please me a great deal if you were to try and change while I am still present.”

Eager to please, Loki nodded enthusiastically. At that moment in time there was no lengths to which he would not go to please his father.

“But of course, you will have to be back in your body for that to occur.”

“Am I not in my body now?”

“You are within your mind. This is more than just thoughts and imaginings. Your gaze has turned completely inwards and now you must look outwards once more.”

“But how do I do that?”

“You must open your eyes, and then open them again.”

A scowl of puzzlement crossed the boy’s face but softened to understanding as he began to drift back.

When it was alone by the still pool, the great eagle shook itself out and dug both sets of talons into the loamy soil in readiness. For a long moment it looked as though Loki had not managed to recreate the state in which he had unwillingly changed, but then a thin film of ice began to spread across the pool, icy patterns arching into life as it thickened and began to overreach the sides.

With a greater exertion of seidr than the Allfather had needed to use in many years, he willed his mouth to speak assurances to his son as the tendrils of ice reached towards his own magic. Then, with a sudden cry of defiance, his seidr screamed at the encroaching glacier and Odin felt his son jerk as it shattered before him. Gathering its reserves, the seidr eagle swiftly leapt into the air before diving down with a punishing force, pulling with it the shards of Jotun magic and driving them deep to the bottom of his son’s soul pool.

He couldn’t stay any longer. He could feel Loki convulsing under his hand and his own magic had been pushed far past the point of endurance. It was with a great heaving gasp that he returned to his body and called for Eir. They would both need the attention of a healer this day but at least his son was cut off from any Jotun specific magics.

He would tell Loki that something went wrong but that he had fixed it. Any past anomalies could be passed off as uncontrolled shifting magic, Thor would believe that to.

They were good boys: they believed their father.

 

* * *

 

The sight before him was of complete desolation. The landscape had been plundered and then raped repeatedly before salt was poured across the soil, seeping into burning cuts and preventing new life from ever growing.

Over two thousand years of cultivation and pruning and nurturing wasted. Beyond even tears, he took in the once vibrant garden of his soul. 

The emptiness he had expected, he had felt the excruciating hollowness of it when he had awoken and in every agonising minute since. But only now, looking fully inwards did he see the extent of the damage the slavery had wrought.

Spells and crafts that he mastered over his long life had manifested as plants and trees within his soul, their deep roots drinking from his soul pool and nourishing themselves with the seidr therein. Not only were they absent, the very roots had been ripped free of the now dusty and barren soil.

Standing at the lip of his soul pool he forced himself to confirm what he already knew to be true. For the first time, in all of his life, Loki could see the depths of his soul and it was as barren and bare as the rest of him. Sucking in a steadying but unnecessary breath, he dived to the bottom. This was still his soul and the empty air, once brimming with theories and magic yet to be realised, steadied him and controlled his fall.

The Allfather’s mercy was present at the very bottom. A tiny trickle of magic, hardly a puddle, but the fallen god trailed his fingers through it as reverentially as a  mother touching her child for the very first time. Letting the feeble power flow through him, longing for the deep reserves that once would have bolstered and heightened it, Loki let the change melt over him. Rejoicing at even this small freedom, he spread dark wings and flew back to the surface.

He past through something as he past the lip, confused he wheeled around in the air before recognising it and settling back by the pool’s edge.

A fine shimmering barrier held just above what was once the surface of the water. It was such a fragile spell, a frivolous thing he had taught himself when he was still learning from the scrolls in Asgard’s libraries but it was intact.

’Enough to keep you safe from any attempts on your life.’

The agent’s words drifted back to him. Not enough to keep him safe, certainly not enough to give him any sense of power, but enough for the thrice-cursed collar to let through this one little spell.

With wing touches more like that of a butterfly than a bird, Loki examined the barrier for any signs of deterioration or damage. It hadn’t been present before his...handler, the term was still an ill fit in his mind, had allowed it. He had felt the meagre power slipping back into him when the man was still in the room but had wisely refrained from mentioning it at the time.

This...was good. This was promising.

If one spell could be returned to him, undamaged and none the worse for it’s removal and restoration, then perhaps his magics were not lost to him completely. The problem returned to his empty seidr pool. Without any power to feed his more mature spells, the would wither on their vines and turn to aught but dust.

His connection, he had to believe that it was not cut or else there really was no hope, if all he could naturally sustain were childish barriers and one other form.

Something caught in his mind, something about the bottom of the pool, but he paid it no heed. He had to concentrate, he had to learn if there was a way to restore his connection to Yggdrasil or replenish his own  repleted inherent seidr.

He would have to work with the man of shield and the Avengers, if only for as long as it took him to find a way get the collar off. He was under no illusions that the Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, what a contemptible name, would actually help him with removing it. Leashed, he could be an asset to them, a controllable one at that. Free? He was a liability at best.

Course set, he opened his eyes, opened them again and let out a slow exhale of breath.

Take one breath, hold, then release. Good. Another.

He had a lot of work to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh gods this chapter fought me at every turn. I technically had it written last Tuesday but I just wasn't happy with it and you deserve my very best efforts.  
> That in mind, if you spot any mistakes please please please point them out and I will fix them lickity split :D  
> Enjoy the über chapter!
> 
> Credit for the 'open your eyes, then open them again' goes to Sir Terry Pratchett. It is such a wonderful phrase, I hope he doesn't mind me borrowing it.


	18. The Perils of Smoothies

As the large holographic dragon drifted silently past his head, Bruce began to wonder where the small shred of sanity he had managed to claw back into his life had gone to.  
The parameters by which he measured normalcy had taken a dramatic shift the instant his life turned a violent shade of green, but there were still a few things that even he had to take a minute to mentally process

The lab-slash-workspace that Tony and he routinely shared was brimming with floating copies of the story book’s illustrations. The dragon wearing the collar that looked far too much like the one currently worn by their guest blurred ever so slightly as Tony walked through it, the tips of his spiked up hair disrupting the outstretched claws and causing the image to rotate gently through the air until it was facing Bruce’s stool.

With an internal groan of resigned disbelief, the gamma radiation scientist noticed that someone had drawn both a monocle and a moustache on it. The truly distressing thing, he thought, polishing his glasses in the vain hope that the sight that greeted him when he replaced them would have changed, was that he had no idea whether it was the twenty-something year old student who had done it, or the ’genius’ who really should know better.  
The genius in question who had seen his expression and was grinning back in absolute glee even whilst he walked backwards to his own worktop, donut in he hand, coffee in the other in a bizarre display of cocky spatial awareness. Bruce shook his head and went back to the screen in front of him.

“If little Loki-kins is about to turn into a big fuck-off dragon,” Tony had stated, “then we are damn well finding a way to stop it. I can do the knight in titanium-alloy armour to a tee, I can even be dashing if I put my mind to it, but it took long enough to rebuild the tower last time and I’m pretty damn sure that my insurance does not cover damage caused by mythical creatures.”

Hulk had sent a firm ripple of want/challenge/smash? through his mind and Bruce had to district himself from the prospect of a Loki-dragon Hulk face off. The mental image of Natasha dressed up in the tradition damsel-in-distress costume and waiting patiently at the top of Stark Tower for her rescue was amusing to them both though. There was no way in hell that the Black Widow would sit and sigh at her window; that dragon would be slain before the rest of them even got their suits on.  
All levity aside, it was abundantly clear that they needed to translate that story as fast and accurately as humanly possible. The possible casualties that such a fight would inevitably cause was beyond considering.

It had been Bruce’s idea to use the other stories in the book as a means to translate the whole. When flicking through the pages, back before they noticed the dragon illustration, he had noticed a series of pictures that, apart form the style, could have been straight from the pages of the Ramayana. The blockish figures and goldleaf looked more akin to a twelfth century manuscript than an Indian folk tale, but the story could be followed all the same.

He had found it again and shown it to Tony. A princess in a protective circle, a golden stag leaping from one page and partially onto the other followed by her capture by an ogre. A thorny tower and then her rescue; the ogre dying horribly and full of arrows.  
It was then that the group had their first major breakthrough. By using a story with familiar parameters, Jarvis could feed the text through his own rough translator programme and use the correlations between the already known Norse phrases and several versions of the specific story in known dialects to increase their language bank exponentially.

Tony had seized on the idea, and within seconds the entire lab space was filled with the glowing outlines of monsters and mermaids and longboats and lions.

“Right peeps! We are getting this language barrier broken today. At least one of these things should bear some resemblance to one that we’re familiar with. Use the illustrations as a base point, the texts are all on your padds. Find some focal point and Jarv’ will do the rest. Darcy, you start on the patch by the suits, Brucie? Can I tear you away from Loki’s super-secret-sand for a while? I really need you on this; if the tower gets wrecked again Pepper’s going to castrate me.”

A little over an hour had passed since then in relatively productive silence, and to tell the truth, Bruce hadn’t needed to much encouragement to leave his experiment for a while.  
Ordinarily, the sheer fascination that came from studying a substance previously unknown to man was a siren call that he struggled to refuse, but he had to admit it: he was getting nowhere with this.

The grey sand from the Tank stubbornly refused to react to absolutely any of the experiments he had run on it.

Electric and magnetic currents yielded minimal results; liquids of various viscosity, pressure and gravity had the same effects on it that he would have expected from any silica sample. It had come up blank for radiation traces and all that Tony’s multi-million dollar scanning equipment had done was conform what his eyes had told him all along.  
Pure and simple, just sand.

Having reached the begrudging conclusion that he would not be able to stimulate a change through environmental control, he began to manually manipulate the substance.  
Any thought of keeping it sterile was moot. It had been in Steve’s hands far too long to remain uncontaminated but at least it had proven itself to be non-corrosive or irritating to human skin.

It moved strangely, especially when compared to the control sample he had sourced. Sand comprised primarily of minuscule particles of rocks and minerals, worn down by the passing of time and the constant friction it was exposed to. This grey sand was far finer, almost powder-like in comparison and the manner in which it moved as it was poured out onto the sanitised table was oddly fluid but it was just sand. And yet it wasn’t

Bruce had watched the surveillance footage over and over again. Loki had been clearly unarmed right up until the point at which he had a blade pointed at Steve’s throat. The structure was obviously sound, the pressure that the god held it with was evident, and yet it dispersed back into sand the moment it hit the floor. Close scrutiny showed it actively moving across the ground and back into Loki’s grasp where it reformed perfectly.  
Any way they looked at it, they were in a dangerous situation. Either they were to believe that Loki was still in possession of his magic, despite the contract’s assertion of the opposite, or he had found a way of smuggling in a highly technologically advanced weapon that even Tony’s security system had no way of identifying. Even worse, was the prospect that the man had outside help.

Letting his eyes drift from the padd screen back over to the sand on the counter, Bruce wondered again if it would have been a better idea to take it up to his own lab.  
The glass container that Butterfingers had brought for him was shatterproof and bulletproof, and knowing Tony it was most likely phaserproof as well, but he had seen the sand move with apparent independence of movement and he had to admit that he had no idea if the container could hold it if the sand decided that it didn’t want to stay there.

The experimental glass that he had samples of in his own lab however, was a hybrid compound that Tony had been working on and off over the past few years. It was one of the first things that Bruce had asked to have a look at when he got to the tower.  
The first working prototype of the substance had gone into the construction of the containment chamber onboard the helicarier. It was capable of withstanding gunfire, repeated blunt force and concentrated energy weapons, it was not however, Mjolnir proof, and that just wasn’t good enough for the ex-weapons manufacturer, so together they had improved on the formula and developed a new substance that had held up to pretty much anything that the combined forces of the Avengers and assorted nasties could through at it.

Hulk hated it with a passion.

If you can’t smash it then what was the point?

There was a fabrication unit up in the ridiculously pretentious lab that Tony had gifted his fellow scientist in the manner that other men would offer the use of a lawnmower they no longer needed. There was in fact, enough top of the range scientific equipment in that enormous sterile room to make scientists with multi-million dollar wage packets cry, let alone a man who had been living rough for the past three years and counting himself lucky to find a microscope that worked.

Tony hadn’t lied; it really was candy-land.  
It was huge and white and beautiful with its stark lines and gleaming counters. He had been given lab assistants too, three of them, and he could do all of the research he wanted, run any experiment without waiting, without asking it for permission, it was all...too much.

He had sent the assistants away within the first month. They had been perfectly capable and had utterly brilliant minds, but it was hard to work with people that couldn’t disguise a flinch at every unexpected noise. It had come to a head when Bruce caught himself swearing in frustration at a particularly recalcitrant coding problem, and looked up to see that everyone else in the room had began to inch towards the door. It hadn’t been fair on any of them.  
So he became a recluse, again.  
He saw most of the team, Steve had this idea that they should eat together at least every couple of days and no one had been able to dissuade him of this notion, but no one visited him down in the lab and he never invited anyone in.

Tony, who had naturally assumed that his friend was having far too much fun with the billion or so dollars worth of lab-tech, had waited nearly six weeks before his natural curiosity and short attention span prompted him to go up to the laboratory where he had discovered the depth of Bruce’s isolation. In true Stark style, he had uprooted both the scientist and the key pieces of machinery, and moved them down into his workshop and had ignored all complaints with true I-don’t-want-to-hear-it deafness.  
The suits stayed on one side and the sterilised equipment stayed on the other. Both men had the company they needed and if Bruce turned a little green from time to time, and around Tony for so long how could he not, then that was fine. Or at least it always was after the rubble had been cleared up.

Another flash of light as a set of illustrations flared briefly before the holograms shut down indicated that another story had been matched with at least a 90% positive correlation to a known legend or folk tale.  
He watched Darcy perform a happy little wiggle from her place on the sofa, You rotating in place with an accompaniment of bleeps, before turning her attention to another small grouping of glowing pictures.

It was strange, seeing a woman in the workshop.  
Pepper came down from time to time, but she was never really in the workshop, she just came down whenever Tony needed to be dragged off to speak at something, or do something, or sign something. Actually, it wasn’t really such a surprise that they rarely saw her, if the only time she came by was to perform the unsavoury task of bullying a man in his mid-forties into acting slightly more mature than the average toddler. Darcy had been in the tower a little over a day, and she had already dug herself a little nook and planted herself firmly in it.

For all that Tony had whined about the supposed loyalty of robots, Bruce could tell that his friend was secretly pleased with how she interacted with them and the obvious delight that the bots got out of her attention.  
Steve was a bit like Pepper where Tony’s helper-bots were concerned. He acknowledged their presence if he was down in the workshop, or if one passed his way on an errand, but he never went out of his way to show them any affection.  
The long standing ’absolutely no assassins in my workshop’ rule meant that the bots had never had the misfortune of prolonged contact with either Natasha or Clint, the fact that the rule still held even after nearly six months of them all living together suggested that Tony still hadn’t forgiven Shield for the whole Natalie Rushman act. Or maybe it was Natasha he hadn’t forgiven yet

Logically, Bruce knew that robots didn’t need or feel affection, but watching Darcy idly tracing patterns on You’s central support while he held her padd steady, it was easy to see why Tony treated them the way he did. From what he had learned about the man before meeting him, Tony Stark had spent a long time in isolation. Not publicaly of course. The man had won GQ’s Most Promiscuous award for three years running at one point in his life and was a world renown playboy, but that was in public.

Tony didn’t like teams. He didn't play well with others, especially others who told him how to play and what to build and which way and how. Most of Stark Idustries greatest inventions we made by Tony all alone in his workshop for days on end, forgetting about sleep and food and drinks that didn’t contain unhealthy amounts of caffeine. The one reason that he most likely hadn’t died or gone insane was his robots. Sure Pepper had done her best but when her employer put himself in lock-down, the safety sub-routines would only kick in and allow her entrance if Tony had lost consciousness. It was a wonder that she had stuck with him for some many years.

Butterfingers gave a low bleep as four more connections sprung into life, linking a series of images which then blinked out of existence. Darcy looked up form her nearly cleared area and over to Tony’s, where the genius was still mostly hidden by unlinked holograms. His progress had been far slower than that of either of his companions. His argument was that the nearest thing he remembered seeing to a fairytale book growing up, was a complete works of Leonardo da Vinci. In his defence, it had included pictures.

Tony had broken his arm in two places the day he finally test piloted the flying machine he had developed using one of the concept drawings in that book. His father had been furious and had given his son a strict lecture on the laws of aerodynamics and the inadvisability of using one’s bedroom window as a launch pad but Tony had only been eight at the time. He had been given flying lessons the next year, if he remembered correctly.

Darcy however, had grown up on a staple of Disney films, and as a young adult, had pursued the grittier versions of the well-known stories she had been told as a child. Frequent bursts of “Red shoes! I know this one!” and other such exclamations came from the sofa area and were often followed by the flare and fade out of holograms being logged into Jarvis’ systems.

Scrolling through a block of text on his padd, Bruce reflected on how odd and yet strangely affirming that some concepts transcended both time and space.  
Foundling children, daring quests, three wishes.  
The book was priceless in its own right, but to anyone who had made the study of myths or folklore their life’s work, it would be the holy grail of literature. There were examples of Japanese folklore alongside Christian Mythology, all in a book that carbon dated to a point before human civilisation. It truly was remarkable.

Bruce tapped off one tale, watched the connections link together before it transferred into the folder, and had just begun on another when all of the active holoscreens closed down.

“Sir? I am sorry to interrupt but the appears to be some disturbance on the Hudson River and Captain Rogers has called for the team to assemble.

Darcy looked up, startled from her slouched position as sections of the Mark VII began to whir into life as Tony stalked past her and onto the platform that Butterfingers had previously been occupying. Large sections of the floor raised up around the man and Darcy watched as longs arms of whirring machinery seamlessly fitted plates of armour onto his body. A few clicks as pieces slotted into place and suddenly Iron Man was in the room, light spilling from the eye slits in the stern face of his helmet.

“Banner, want a lift?” His voice came out slightly distorted, but it was evidently still Tony in there.

“I’m good,” the scientist replied, already having stripped off his lab coat and making towards the far end of the workshop. “I’ll take Steve’s bike.”

“Try not to trash it again. I’ll see you there.” And with a suddenly blinding glow as the harsh light of the repulsers started up, the man was airborne and streaking past the scientist and out trough the concealed vehicle access

Darcy watched him go, still blinking through the after images filling her vision and heard the muted roar of a motorcycle as Bruce too left the workshop.

“Well shit guys, don’t make a girl feel special.” She pushed her way off the sofa and glared balefully in the direction the two superheroes had just left in.

“Miss Lewis? If I may offer a suggestion?”

“Sure J, seeing as I’m not even important enough to say goodbye to.”

“I have amassed enough translated data to make a full transcription of file 076/:dragonyone. Would you like me to transfer the file to your padd?”

“Sure, go ahead.”

With a twinge of pain, Darcy realised that she hadn’t really moved for what had probably been at least four hours. Straightening up she laced her fingers and stretched up onto her tiptoes, feeling her back crack at least twice as she forced it back into proper alignment. Still facing in the direction of the small collection of incredibly expensive cars, Darcy was surprised to feel the nudge of Dummy as ran gently into the back of her legs.

“Oh!...oh hey little buddy. Whatcha got there?” She asked, taking the proffered plastic cup from the bot’s outstretched claw and looking closely at the contents before raising the straw to her mouth

“Miss Lewis, I would advise you not to-” Jarvis began but the woman had already taken a deep draw on the straw and had a mouthful of the curiously thick green liquid before his warning could be acknowledged.

The look that passed over her face was...interesting, and Dummy bleeped plaintively up at her, furling and unfurling his claw, unsure as to what to make of her reaction. She took a deep breath through her nose, held it, and swallowed

“Jarvis?

“Yes, Miss Lewis?"

“What did I just out in my mouth?

“Nothing toxic I assure you.”

“Not helping.

“A...smoothie, for lack of a better word. A combination of vitamins, minerals and a variety of raw green vegetables. Based on the contents of the fridge, that particular beverage contained spinach, broccoli, fresh ginger, kiwi, two varieties of kelp and samphire...Miss Lewis? Are you in need of medical assistance? There is a receptacle to your left if you are in need of it. Doctor Banner experienced a similar reaction when Dummy accidentally added motor oil instead of soy sauce to the doctor’s meal. I have tried on multiple occasions to prompt Sir into repairing him but..”

“It’s okay, I get the impression that trying to get Starky to do anything he doesn’t want to usually results in the asker banging their head against a wall.”

“Metaphorically, in my case, but quite true.”

A low bleep drew Darcy’s attention back downwards to where Dummy had wheeled himself. His frame was bent forward and he almost looked reproachful, his claw still making tiny aborted gestures as if wishing it had some task with which to occupy itself

“Hey, sweetie.” Darcy crooned, hunkering down so that she was level with the bot’s lowered claw. “It wasn't so bad. Hey Jarvis?

“Yes, Miss Lewis?"

“Does this guy have a name?”

“He is designation 00/01DUM-E.

“Dummy? Oh you poor guy. Stark has shitty taste in naming things. Hey, Dummy?” She reached out and laid one hand on the bot’s frame, pleased when he didn’t move away from her. “Can you do me a favour?”

Another low bleep but one that rose slightly in pitch at the end, almost inquiringly.  
“You can make smoothies right?

His claw perked up at this but then lowered as his optics took in the sight of the unwanted drink. Not good enough.

“Oh don't look like that. This is a wonderful smoothie and I'm sure that Starky loves the way you make them, but I’m not used to such amazingly healthy drinks. See, I am what is called a sugar junkie and we like...well, sugar and sweet things. Do you want to try and make me a different smoothie? One that isn’t quite so...green?”

The string of rising and falling bleeps that greeted her request was answer enough but she was still surprised at the speed with which he hurtled away from her.

“What is he doing?” She asked, watching the bot flash a code at the door panel and go sailing through it in the direction of the lift."

“He appears to be searching for ingredients for your beverage Miss Lewis. His coding is very primitive but I can ascertain that he has deemed the contents of Sir’s fridge lacking and has gone to check the others."

“Is he allowed to do that? Roam around the tower and stuff?"

“Sir practically encourages it.” The disdain was clear in the AI’s tone though he would have denied it vehemently if questioned. “The elevator capacity is much larger here than in Sir’s other residences, it also has a larger load bearing capacity. These changes were made primarily to accommodate the increased mass of Doctor Banner’s alternate form. Dummy however, interpreted it as an excuse to spread his own individual brand of mischief and mayhem upon a larger scale and I have had little success in containing him.”  
“So...he’ll be okay up there? He knows his way around?”  
“With the exception of the young ladies from accounts, who for some inexplicable reason have a tendency to cover him in post-it notes, he has run into few problems ’up there’, as you put it. There are no areas in this building that I cannot see into Miss Lewis, if it is his safety you are concerned about, I can assure you that he is under constant surveillance and highly unlikely to suffer damage to his structural integrity whilst compiling the ingredients for a smoothie.”  
Darcy seemed content with his answer and finished off her round of stretches before plucking up her padd and selecting the newly translated file. A frown spread across her forehead as an uncomfortable line of thought arose.  
“No areas you can't see into?” She asked carefully.  
“Seeing is not perhaps the correct verb, but yes, I have access to all areas in which cameras are installed and, before you ask, there are a few locations in which there is limited surveillance equipment for the sake of privacy.”  
Darcy raised one eyebrow slowly, her face still tilted up to the ceiling.  
“It’s still a bit pervy.”  
At the AI’s lack of response she turned her attention back to the tablet screen. The quirked smile she had worn through the entirety of their exchange fled in the wake of pursed lips and a frown of concentration.  
“J?”  
“Yes, Miss Lewis?”  
“Have the others read this yet?”  
“Negative. The Avengers are currently engaged in battle with what appears to be a sea-serpent.”  
“Is...is anyone else around?”  
“I am afraid not. Agent Coulson left with Agents Barton and Romanov; Miss Potts was called away on business; Captain Rogers was already at the scene when he contacted me and you were present when Sir and Doctor Banner left. The only other organic life form currently within the tower is Loki who had been secured in the Blue Room.”  
The hangnail that Darcy had begun worrying suddenly broke off and she tasted blood as it blossomed across her tongue. With a sigh, she inspected the damage. The nail was chipped, a jagged edge growing red with blood but her thoughts were full of dragons and meanings and why the fuck everyone had to up and leave her just when they had finally gotten the damn thing translated.  
“Has...” She broke off, tapping one finger on the edge of the padd, her other hand moving to cup her face as she thought. “Is this Loki guy safe?”  
“If you are asking whether he is in the process of being tortured in unimaginable ways, then the answer is no. If you are enquiring as to whether it is advisable for you to confront him, then my answer is also no.  
Loki, currently of no fixed last name, is directly responsible for the deaths of fourteen civilians and seventy-four Shield personnel during his recent campaign on Earth and through the use of the weapon ’The Destroyer’ in New Mexico two years ago.  
He has shown himself to be proficient in both armed and unarmed combat as well as the arcane arts. He is also a skilled manipulator and renown trickster.  
Agent Coulson has allowed him partial use of his magic so that he can defend himself but we are as of yet unsure how effective the Nidavellir collar will remain at containing him. It is therefore, statistically unwise for you, or any other unarmed civilian, to come into contact with him.”  
“Well,” she breathed out, clicking off her padd and heading out through the glass doors. “It’s a damn good thing I’m armed.”

-

“Agent Coulson?”

“Speaking.”  
“Miss Lewis is currently heading to the Blue Room with the intention of talking with Loki.”  
“Good. Keep me posted.”  
“Very well.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, Coulson knows everything.  
> Sorry about the long wait peeps. I worked really hard on the last chapter and I just didn't get much feedback on it so it knocked my confidence a bit. I've re-read the fic so far and have tweaked a few bits and I hope you like the new chapter.  
> I'm not fishing for comments but feedback does let me know I'm on the right path and encourages me to write faster.  
> Any mistakes, you guys know the drill :)


	19. Update 20/12/14

Hello everyone. I'm sorry that this isn't a new chapter (yet) but I feel as though you deserve an explanation.  
I was seventeen when I started this, my first, fanfic. I received some very hurtful comments which I subsequently deleted but they really hit home and shook my confidence.

I have been revisiting this fic since last October and rewriting it. The plot is remaining almost exactly the same, however it will be fleshed out slightly and I am pleased with how it is going so far. I will be posting it as soon as the first 18 chapters are fully written, so as not to have the first five up and confuse people when the next chapter doesn't quite line up anymore.

Thank you all for your patience with me, and thank you especially to smallbrownfrog, who commissioned the most wonderful piece of fanart for this fic. Please check it out, it truly is wonderful.

\- Tangerine.


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